Quotes from Ann Howard Creel

A classroom of students may read the same piece of poetry or the same passage in a novel, and each person may interpret it differently.

Separately we might have sunk, but together we moved beyond bloodlines and nationalities and backgrounds and formed a vessel that somehow stayed afloat.

If life was really a journey, then children had to be the center of the wheel that moved it.

I'd become a woman who dreamed of yelling at people who didn't even know how infuriating I found them.

Della never set foot more than a few paces off the waterfront. A sweet little thing with brassy hair and misty green eyes, she made a living off being shapely and willing, with no other means to support herself. As the town whore, she lived above one of the ramshackle dockside establishments and catered to men coming in off a fishing boat, reeking of the

Livvy and her father] Neither of us had been as strong as we'd wanted to be.

eyes running over me like the work of a hundred biting ants

One can't step into the river twice

darkness, salt on her lips, big boats lingering on the horizon, crates of liquor luring them out, rolls of bills in her hands, lawmen on the take, and funerals. Desire and kisses. New York City on the arm of a man. A nice dress. Racing over the ocean. Whiskey bottles. Fear and exultation. How had it come to this? And where

It is most important what we do in life, not necessarily how our deeds began.

Adah discovered she had a knack for reading people. She took that God-given talent and further developed her observational skills. Everyone had a tell, and she used that more than anything else to survive by fortune-telling.

Let us not fail, my ladies. Let us do more, always do more than we think we're capable of. As we embark on this journey, ask yourself now and every day—every bad day, every good day—if you have done your best." She paused; then, as she slowly swept her gaze around our little assembled entourage again, she said, "Ask yourself even now—especially now—as in the words of the poet Edgar Guest, 'Have you earned your tomorrow?

The chauffeuses . . . were manifestly ladies of the new school . . . not sitting in balconies, gazing at sympathetic stars and longing for the hero to return. No, indeed, they were following him in a motor car.

Perhaps someday we could all make it back to the places where we started. I didn't believe it, but I tried to.

POW camp, he'd imagined a sweet life in a tidy house, Alice

No hocus-pocus here. Just lots of living; it lends you some wisdom. Which I'm guessing is a trade-off for lost youth.

I hoped her mood would pass, but it looked as if something essential inside her had slipped away. Shell shock. Fatigue of battle. War neurosis. Apparently, it didn't take long to strike.

Once, she'd overheard Jessamine, who had been an expert in herbs, tell a woman how to make a homespun spermicide to prevent pregnancy. Adah had remembered the recipe and followed that advice for the remainder of the marriage, even though her apparent barrenness had angered Lester further

The light in Lisen and Geoff's apartment was warm, as was the atmosphere, and it poured around us like heated cream.