Quotes from Susan Wittig Albert

Herbs and spices come from different parts of a useful plant. Herb refers to the leaves, flowers, or stems. Spice refers to the seed, fruit, root, or bark. Vanilla extract is made from the fruit of the vanilla orchid—its pod, or bean—so we call vanilla a spice.

Write your passion and somebody will pay you for it.

But I was too many things, and wanted too many things, and could never decide which ones might (if I would pay them the proper attention) be most important.

the trouble with my life was that it had no strong central storyline—at least, certainly not a conventional one, with love and marriage as its main theme. Just when I thought I'd found something to hold on to, the plot was altered by events I couldn't control.

I was longing, instead, for the feelings I'd had when I first met him, wishing I could love with that sweetly giddy, self-forgetting exhilaration just once more in my life and knowing, somehow, that I wouldn't. I was, I think, longing for my younger self, full of optimism and joy and impatient for life, for adventure, for risk.

money is a matter of faith—as thirty-six inches are a yard only because multitudes agree to that measure of length and keep that agreement." If the agreement was broken, "faith was gone, and any tangible thing to eat, to wear, to shelter one's body from the weather was more valuable than any number of pieces of paper, which were only symbols of a lost faith.

But there's no dictating the directions a heart can take, or how far it will go to follow its urgings, or how many large loves it will embrace. Deeply, tenderly.

Don't," Myrtle said sharply. "Thinking is not your strong suit, Pansy. Nor Viola's. Neither of you have any experience of the world on which to base any opinion at all. If you will keep your thoughts to yourself, they will not be exposed as foolishness.

It was just part of her nature, along with her habit of wanting to know what was behind the appearances that other people put on when they went out the door in the morning, and suspecting their motivations, and questioning their intentions.

Mountain Songcatchers. I remembered it from the movie O Brother Where Art Thou.

there's even a word—testilying—for the perjured testimony that an officer gives in court when he's covering up for his own or another officer's misconduct during an investigation.

Death, oh death, How can it be That I must come and go with thee For death, oh death How can it be I'm unprepared For eternity.

I had to concede that there was some logic to McQuaid's concern. But it wasn't logic we were talking about, it was control. The emancipated China rose up in me, the China who hates to be told what to do by somebody who thinks he knows better. She was indignant, and she spoke for me.

We buy insurance because we're scared we'll lose what we've got. Why are we scared? Because the insurance companies keep reminding us how much we've got to lose. Then, when you've got a claim, they send somebody out to tell you why they can't pay.

One person's weed is another person's wildflower.

The worst thing about talk ... is that there's no way to lay it to rest. Every fresh breeze brings a new speculation.

Does that mean you're prepared to deal with whatever turns up? People aren't sometimes. When they learn the real truth, they're all of a sudden content to live with a lie.

There is nothing like a grocery list to remind us how human we are.

After a few months, I was no longer wildly romantic about him. But he gave me a warm place to park my heart while I went about my work.

Never ask, never get," the dog replied. "Never try, never taste. Never taste, never enjoy.

It is only in fiction that the protagonist moves in a single minded, one point focus, screening out everything that isn't related to the plot. Real people have to deal with the Myrtles of this world, who have sciatica and cold sores and want to tell you about them

every American is governed only by the principle of personal responsibility and that his or her most important freedom is the absolute freedom to flourish or fail.

Do any of us ever outgrow those old childhood hurts, or do they gnaw and fester in our spirits the whole length of our lives?

And Miss Potter? Well, having believed in fairies when she was a child and continuing to believe in the creative power of the imagination, she was not at all bothered by the possibility that she and the children might see something they didn't understand.