I knew I must do all as I was told, yet something burned inside me, a seed of defiance that must have derived from a long-ago ancestor. Perhaps my mind was inflamed from the books I had read and the worlds I had imagined.

I'd thrown my fate away once, and I would never again allow other people's opinions rule my life. As a girl I'd done what was necessary, but I was a girl no longer.

Sometimes the right thing felt all wrong until it was over and done with.

Eddie had come to understand that what a man saw and what actually existed in the natural world often were contradictory. The human eye was not capable of true sight, for it was constrained by its own humanness, clouded by regret, and opinion, and faith.

She did believe in one thing, something so vast and deep she couldn't bring herself to tell John, even though it was probably safe to confide in someone she would never see again. She believed that people could lose themselves.

Close your eyes and listen, such people advised, then walk twenty paces farther than you thought necessary. Just when you're certain you've lost your way completely, you'll be there. Open your eyes.

Ben would have done anything for you." "I thought that meant he was an idiot." "No," Maravelle says. "It means you're an idiot.

She had the ability to spot a liar, except for the lies spoken by someone she loved. That's what had caught her up; she'd been distracted by love, which seemed, at least at the time, to be the truest thing in the world.

Keep the light out, have faith, trust in what you feel, not in what you see. Leave the matches at home. Leave it be.

You can tell just by looking at her that she never backed down or valued anyone's opinion above her own. She always believed that experience was not simply the best teacher, it was the only one

Would you like to know your fatal flaw?' Eddie flushed with annoyance. He could have easily made a list of Hochman's flaws, enough to fill several pages. Still, he was curious. 'Please do tell.' 'You judge what you don't understand.

Oh, Celie, unbelief is a terrible thing. And so is the hurt we cause others unknowingly.