Quotes from Susan Wiggs

My mother used to always tell me to embrace my dreams. If I can give you a chance to do so, then it's a gift to me, as well.

When nature drew a creature to sweetness, there could be no stopping it.

there are some things you don't have a choice about, but there's plenty you can choose. Like happiness. Like focusing on the positive.

What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?" —E. M. Forster

When she was a girl, Natalie used to start each day by skipping through the shop, calling good morning to her favorites as she passed them---Angelina Ballerina, Charlotte and Ramona, Lilly and her purple plastic purse.

How'm I doing, Mamma? Celesta, twenty years gone, would undoubtedly approve. The restaurant smelled like the kitchen of Rosa's childhood; the menu featured many of the dishes Celesta had once prepared with warmth, intense flavors and a certain uncomplicated contentment Rosa constantly tried to recapture. She wanted the restaurant to serve Italian comfort food, the kind that fed hidden hungers and left people full of fond remembrances.

I read sixty books last year." "Geez," he said. "Why?" "'Cause there wasn't time to read more

Setting out some honey shortbread cookies to go with the lemonade, she flashed on memories of her grandmother, offering refreshments to anyone who was lucky enough to come through the kitchen door. As a working farm, Bella Vista was always busy with workers, some seasonal and others permanent. 'In my kitchen, everyone is family,' Bubbie used to say, beaming as the orchard workers, mechanics or gardeners gladly wolfed down her baked goods.

She joined a book group and actually read each selection, remembering that at several places in her life, books have been her refuge.

Family" included Natalie, who was the sort of aunt every kid wanted, the sort of sister every woman should have, related by something much more potent than blood.

I think I loved her from the first moment I saw her. Before that, I loved her, too. Before I even knew she existed outside the realm of my dreams.

She loved reading books. While her mom was busy making sandwiches, she would curl up in a corner and read to keep herself company.

Questions swelled inside her, tangling with questions that would never be answered. The trouble with being angry with a dead person, she reflected, was that you could never sit down with her, talk things out, get an explanation, make amends.

Time and circumstances could batter away at it, like waves on a rocky shore, but for some people, love never died.

A big family is not so different from a busy restaurant. It's all about the dishes and laundry.

Will it matter in five years?

He had practically made a career out of reading parenting books, even though they all seemed to give conflicting advice. One thing they agreed on was that rebellion stemmed from a need to escape parental control, running up against a need for boundaries and limits. Not that it made dealing with a thirteen-year-old any easier.

Maybe the lesson to be learned here was that the price of letting someone into her heart was the pain of letting go. Or maybe the even harder work of holding on, no matter what the risk.

Being paralyzed is a condition. Being angry is a choice

life was beautiful, that love and adventure were possible even when times were hard or frightening.

The girls used to play together in Portsmouth Square, surrounded by Chinese grannies sipping their milk tea and playing board games. They'd snack on soft buns filled with sweet coconut, and when it rained, they'd dunk into the curio shops or the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory, their senses dazzled by the delicious, sugary aroma.

walking again. But being inconspicuous on

we can move past our history, but we can never truly erase it.

When times get hard and you start wondering why you got married in the first place, remember the love.