Quotes from Frances O'Roark Dowell

A friend is someone whose face you can see in the dark.

Everybody's broken, sweetie. God helps us get put back together. ~Rev. Mayes The Kind of Friends We Used to Be

He was a big talker, someone who liked words for words' sake, the sound of them, the way you can pile them up in your mouth and make a poem if you speill them out the right way. p92

That was a funny thing about friends, Marylin thought. You could know a person practically your whole life and she could still surprise you.

Tobin, my man, you are going to learn about chickens. And when you to learn about chickens, you will learn about life.

I like your mama,' Trena tells me. 'She seems like good people.' 'Smile!' my mom calls to me from across the room, and I look at her and smile. Because she is good people. And she means well, even if she does drive me crazy.

You know why trees smell the way they do? Murphy asked, looking up from her hammering. Sap? Logan guessed. Chlorophyll? Murphy shook her head. Stars. Trees breathe in starlight year after year, and it goes deep into their bones. So when you cut a tree open, you smell a hundred years' worth of light. Ancient starlight that took millions of years to reach earth. That's why trees smell so beautiful and old.

You can't expect a person to love an animal they might see decapitated at any minute. It ain't realistic, I told Miss Blue, who was gulping down her worm. She looked up at me like it shocked her to learn that some chickens got treated that way.

Perhaps you'll apprentice to a healer when you're older, Grete suggested. I'd say you have the gift for it. Hen reddened, then seemed suddenly fascinated with a speck on her shoe. Be nice to have a gift for something, she said after a moment. But they don't let girls apprentice, now, do they? Grete harrumphed. A bunch of fools, the lot who came up with that system. You lose half the world's brainpower that way.

My dad, who my mom always refers to as DH for Darling Husband, was protrayed as a 'let's look on the bright side of things' kind of guy, the pillar my everbumbling mother leans on in times of distress.

You gonna stand in my backyard and ignore me to my face?

4. If you do not give your chickens enough space, light, air, and walking-around room, they will eat one another.

Quit it already. I'm pretty enough as it is.

I'm not done arguing with you, Mrs.Fletcher. I'm going to convince you yet. Well I reckon I got ten or twenty more years in me before I pass on, Granny told him. So feel free to take your time.

Granny sat down on the step and stared off into the trees. That girl right there, she was my only child. I have lost two husbands, one by death, the other by divorce, and I have lost my parents and my brothers and sisters. But nothing ever pierced me to the core like that little girl's dying. I know it wasn't your daddy's fault. I know I messed up by filling a report to Social Services. Is that what you want to here? Is that what it takes for you not to be mad at me?

I look at Sarah and Emma, and I know that's what they want someday, to have an amazing story like this to tell, one where they faced obstacles but were brave, one where they made a difference in people's lives. And that's when I feel that big feeling again - the one I felt the first time I picked up Monster's bass - that strange sense that I'm becoming larger. Just by sitting here listening. Just by understanding how large a person's life can be -Janie

Authentic funkiness mean never trying to hard -Janie

Nonviolence is a weapon of the strong -Emma

Only one thing to do about hate that big...and that's to put a bigger love out there -Monster

What's really weird is my mom's clothes smell like her. I mean, her perfume, and so all day it's like m mom has been walking right beside me. Which, you have to admit, a pretty freaky feeling.