“Believing everything she read
In the daily news,
(No in-between to choose)
She thought that only
One side won,
Not that BOTH
Might lose.”

“Once she knows how to read there's only one thing you can teach her to believe in and that is herself.”

“She read everything.”

“She wondered if literature might lose some of its interest when she reached an age or state of mind where her life was set on such a sure course that the things she read might stop seeming so powerfully like alternate directions for her being.”

“A sort of transaction went on between them, in which she was on one side, and life was on another, and she was always trying to get the better of it, as it was of her.”

“The oldest girl [his daughter Maro, four and a half years old] did this. She paints like a little bird. And this, the young one [Natasha, two and a half] did. See, she paints on both sides of the canvas. She is more like a passionate plumber. I wish I could paint as freely as they do. There is a gravity of playfulness in their work. If they could only keep it – but they will lose it as they grow older.”

“Katie eventually realizes that she must choose between a life of transient safety and one of riskier rewards…and that in the darkest hour, love is the only true safe haven.”

“Her heart - like every heart, if only its fallen sides were cleared away - was an inexhaustible fountain of love: she loved everything she saw.”

““So whose side are you on? You have to choose.”
“I’m not going to be on anybody’s side anymore,” she said. “Sides are stupid.””

“For a long time she flew, only when she thought no one else was watching.”