Quotes from Maud Hart Lovelace

Joe Willard turned from his study of the trees beyond the window and raised his hand. 'Yes, Joe?' Mr. Gaston said, changing his tone. 'It is my opinion sir, that apple blossoms are pink.' Mr. Gaston was silent, stunned. 'Pinkish, rather.' Joe continued. 'I think Betsy's word 'rosy' is excellent. They're colored just enough to make the effect rosy.' The silence in the room had width, height, depth, mass and substance.

And when she went that far in her thoughts it sounded absurd. Was she the same Emily Webster who had been so humble and adoring with Don? Could it be she seriously thought it possible that anyone so desirable as Jed Wakeman could be in love with her? The truth was that she did.

And just as Betsy came up the telephone bell inside the kitchen rang. Two long and three short rings, the Taggarts' call.

You're going to be a writer, he repeated, and you need more education. That's plain. But college isn't the only place to get an education. I have a 'snoggestion.' That was what Mr. Ray always called a particularly good suggestion. I've sounded Mamma out and she approves. How would you like a year abroad?

He was always so happy, and she was sometimes depressed, although not so often as she used to be. And he was so completely unselfconscious, so untroubled by perplexities and doubts of the sort which had always beset her. But they beset her less and less. He was always confident, without being at all vain, and he was building that same confidence in her.

The five-year-olds were the most important members of the large doll families. Everything pleasant happened to them. They had all the adventures.

Everything he said seemed complimentary, somehow, although he wasn't gallant in the artificial sense. But plainly he liked her, and she liked him.

hope you'll go to church as regularly as mother and I do. We miss a Sunday now and then, when it's fine picnicking weather. We know that God made the out-of-doors, too. But year in, year out, we go to church pretty regularly.

It's down in your own heart. Religion is in your thoughts, and in the way you act from day to day, in the way you treat other people. It's honesty, and unselfishness, and kindness. Especially kindness.

That Jed Wakeman is *nice*, Emily remarked aloud when she reached her own room. He was, she thought, such a happy normal person, so - outgiving. Her eyes chanced to fall on Don's picture inspecting her disdainfully. She took it up and changed it from the front row of pictures to the back. As she did so she wished she could put him that easily into the background of her life.

That affair with Tony helped my writing," she told Tacy. "I mean, it will when I get around to write. It's good for writers to suffer." Tony dropped in often, teasing and affectionate as ever, and quite unaware of having improved her art.

Depression settled down upon her, and although she tried to brush it away it thickened like a fog. ...But she felt lonely and deserted and futile. A mood like this has to be fought...

Why doesn't Tacy like boys?' asked Alice. 'But I do like them,' protested Tacy. 'I just don't think they are little tin gods.

She did bring home books from the library, in armloads, replenishing them every two or three days. She read avidly, indiscriminately, using them as an antidote for the pain in her heart. But they didn't help much. There was no one to talk them over with.

She could feel the Big Hill looking down as the Crowd danced at Tib's wedding in the chocolate-colored house.

She felt heavy and lifeless, and her mind reached out despairingly for something to fill the day.

You can't hand boys around as though they were pieces of cake, she said. Don't worry about getting a boy for me, Betsy. Boys just don't seem important to me. They don't seem any more important to me than they ever did. Tacy! said Betsy. You're beyond me! Well! said Tacy. That's the way I am.

She thought of the library, so shining white and new; the rows and rows of unread books; the bliss of unhurried sojourns there and of going out to a restaurant, alone, to eat.

It was June, and the world smelled of roses. The sunshine was like powdered gold over the grassy hillside.

Isn't it mysterious to begin a new journal like this? I can run my fingers through the fresh clean pages but I cannot guess what the writing on them will be.

Betsy returned to her chair, took off her coat and hat, opened her book and forgot the world again.

People were always saying to Margaret, 'Well, Julia sings and Betsy writes. Now what is little Margaret going to do?' Margaret would smile politely, for she was very polite, but privately she stormed to Betsy with flashing eyes, 'I'm not going to do anything. I want to just live. Can't people just live?

Then he kissed her. Betsy didn't believe in letting boys kiss you. She thought it was silly to be letting first this boy and then that one kiss you, when it didn't mean a thing. But it was wonderful when Joe Willard kissed her. And it did mean a thing.

She tried to act as though it were nothing to go to the library alone. But her happiness betrayed her. Her smile could not be restrained, and it spread from her tightly pressed mouth, to her round cheeks, almost to the hair ribbons tied in perky bows over her ears.