01c. 1971 ADDon't be vain. What you look like doesn't matter. It's the deed that matters.Sarah Addison Allen / quote ↗
02c. 1971 ADHe hadn't meant to get so angry at Morgan. He didn't often get angry at other people. There was no sense in it. The person you were angry at was rarely ever repentant. Now, getting angry with yourself had some merit. It showed you had sense enough to chastise the one person who had any hope of benefiting from it. And he was plenty angry with himself. For many things.Sarah Addison Allen / quote ↗
03c. 1971 ADSometimes it's difficult to tell what side of the moral compass we are all on. There are so many things to factor in.Sarah Addison Allen / quote ↗
04c. 1971 ADAt the end of the evening, Paxton and Willa walked Agatha out to the nurse's car, after Agatha had given them a blind tour of the Madam, pointing out by feel and memory everything she remembered about the house. She and Georgie sliding down the banister and their skirts flying up. Playing dolls in Georgie's room. Having pineapple upside-down cake the Jacksons' cook would make in a cast-iron frying pan, so that the brown sugar on top turned crispy. A slide-away secret compartment in the bookcase where they used to leave notes for each other.Sarah Addison Allen / quote ↗
05c. 1971 ADWhen Paxton was a teenager, her friends had even envied her relationship with her mother. Everyone knew that neither Paxton nor Sophia scheduled anything on Sunday afternoons, because that was popcorn-and-pedicures time, when mother and daughter sat in the family room and watched sappy movies and tried out beauty products. And Paxton could remember her mother carrying dresses she'd ordered into her bedroom, almost invisible behind tiers of taffeta, as they'd planned for formal dances. She'd loved helping Paxton pick out what to wear. And her mother had exquisite taste. Paxton could still remember dresses her mother wore more than twenty-five years ago. Imprinted in her memory were shiny blue ones, sparkly white ones, wispy rose-colored ones.Sarah Addison Allen / quote ↗
06c. 1971 ADNo one should ever compromise the dignity of another human being.Sarah Addison Allen / quote ↗
07c. 1971 ADI know he's a good baby... but the challenge is to raise him into a good boy, then a good man.Sarah Addison Allen / quote ↗
08c. 1971 ADThere's not a lot I can fix for her anymore. Band-Aid and bedtime story days are almost over. This, I can fix with a simple Welcome.Sarah Addison Allen / quote ↗
09c. 1971 ADWhenever I would get too nosy as a child, my grandmother would say, "When you learn someone else's secret, your own secrets aren't safe. Dig up one, release them all.Sarah Addison Allen / quote ↗
10c. 1971 ADBay remembered the Waverley house full of pumpkin pie scents in the fall. There had been mountains of maple cakes with violets hidden inside, lakes of butternut soups with chrysanthemum petals floating on top.Sarah Addison Allen / quote ↗
11c. 1971 ADMary had become anxious in her old age, and she hated being away from the house for long. She'd hold the girls' hands tightly and calm herself by telling them what she would make for first frost that year- pork tenderloins with nasturtiums, dill potatoes, pumpkin bread, chicory coffee. And the cupcakes, of course, with all different frostings, because what was first frost without frosting? Claire had loved it all, but Sydney had only listened when their grandmother talked of frosting. Caramel, rosewater-pistachio, chocolate almond.Sarah Addison Allen / quote ↗
12c. 1971 ADPeople like us will never really understand, Evanelle said. We fell in love with the men we were supposed to be with right off the bat. But women with broken hearts, they change.Sarah Addison Allen / quote ↗
13c. 1971 ADYou can't change where you came from, but you can change where you go from here. Just like a book. If you don't like the ending, you make up a new one.Sarah Addison Allen / quote ↗
14c. 1971 ADBut she couldn't start this, because then it would end. Stories like this always ended. She couldn't take this pleasure, because she would spend the rest of her life missing it, hurting from it.Sarah Addison Allen / quote ↗
15c. 1971 ADHe claimed the waters must have, indeed, been healing, because look how hard his journey was on him to get there, and how easy it was on him to get home.Sarah Addison Allen / quote ↗
16c. 1971 ADWarm, enticing scents were floating down, basil and oregano and tomato. It made Wes long for something, something he couldn't place. A happy childhood, a home.Sarah Addison Allen / quote ↗
17c. 1971 ADAdolescence is like having only enough light to see the step directly in front of you.Sarah Addison Allen / quote ↗
18c. 1971 ADBut Claire had long ago realized, even after those constant dreams of her mother leaving faded away, that when you are abandoned as a child, you are never able to forget that people are capable of leaving, even if they never do.Sarah Addison Allen / quote ↗
19c. 1971 ADShe knew him in that way you can only know a person as a child. Like if you cracked away the adult shell, you'd find that child, happily sitting inside, smiling at you.Sarah Addison Allen / quote ↗
20c. 1971 ADIt was the best first kiss in the history of first kisses. It was as sweet as sugar. And it was warm, as warm as pie. The whole world opened up and I fell inside. I don't know where I was, but I didn't care. I didn't care because the only person who mattered was there with me.Sarah Addison Allen / quote ↗
21c. 1971 ADTo Fred, those years seemed to pass like quickly skimming a book and then finding the ending wasn't what he expected. He wished he'd paid more attention to the story.Sarah Addison Allen / quote ↗
22c. 1971 ADThose silly girls had no idea what they were really celebrating. They had no idea what it took to bring Agatha and her friends together seventy-five years ago. The Women's Society Club had been about supporting one another, about banding together to protect one another because no one else would. But it had turned into an ugly beast, a means by which rich ladies would congratulate themselves by giving money to the poor. And Agatha had let it happen. All her life, it seemed, she was making up for things she let happen.Sarah Addison Allen / quote ↗
23c. 1971 ADJust as she was about to turn, she caught a whiff of something sweet. She inhaled deeply, instinctively wanting to savor it, but then she nearly choked when it landed on her tongue with a bitter taste. It was so strong she actually made a face.That, her grandmother had described to her once after making a particularly bad lemon cream pie, was exactly what regret tasted like.Sarah Addison Allen / quote ↗
24c. 1971 ADMotherhood is hard enough without judgement from others who don't know the whole story.Sarah Addison Allen / quote ↗
