Dicey felt a great weight settle on her shoulders. She…

You must not let yourself become too respectable. Keep yourself a little wild. What is life for, if not for the living of it?

— Cynthia Voigt

“On a bright Sunday morning in the early years of the last century,”

— Cynthia Voigt

“People had no more choice than animals about the burdens they carried.”

— Cynthia Voigt

The worst things weren't outside of you.

— Cynthia Voigt

“He knew it was perfect, and perfectly beautiful. He thought about how much she would like it. When he thought like that, happiness swelled…

— Cynthia Voigt

“You were going to fall, you always did, but you had to get up fast and keep going.”

— Cynthia Voigt

Even the bad books I write are satisfying. I'm my least critical reader.

— Cynthia Voigt

People can be unimaginably foolish...and they can be unimaginably grand, at times.

— Cynthia Voigt

“And so I was. I can put on the cloak of the world I find myself in, however I happen to find myself in…

— Cynthia Voigt

“The people they had been last summer, the person she had been--Dicey guessed she'd never be afraid again, not the way she had been…

— Cynthia Voigt

“ I felt that the world itself had changed and that it would never be steady under my feet again. I felt I understood…

— Cynthia Voigt

Kids are really tougher than adults, but we tend to forget this in an affluent society that lets kids indulge themselves.

— Cynthia Voigt

“Mina thought to herself, watching, her momma was the kind of woman she wanted to be, wherever else she got to in her life.”

— Cynthia Voigt

“The No filled the whole air of the house. Every time she breathed in she breathed in that No.”

— Cynthia Voigt

“Mina wanted some of the kind of love Momma gave to her children, where love was the first and deepest thing, and the questions…

— Cynthia Voigt