Quotes from Luanne Rice

Stars were caught in the tree branches. She wished she could keep stars in her pocket, just to give him every time she saw him.

gardening was the same as prayer: being quiet, present, and appreciative of nature.

She was a true paradox—so solitary, but with intense need for connection with the people she loved most.

Never diminish your own worth, not even in jest, or someone will start to believe it.

what would it be like—to see the world like that? To love nature and people in such a pure way that it would never occur to her to ask what they could do for her? Emma knew that Stevie was terribly vulnerable—things made her cry so easily.

I stared into the lion's eyes and knew that he could take me down so easily. He'd swipe me with his curved claws, clamp his fangs around my throat or my skull, kill me in an instant.

Life was so short. Every moment was precious!

Reid took note: the first two ly words. He'd found that suspects who turned out to be guilty tended to use adverbs, thinking they were being more convincing. He also noticed the way Pete emphasized "the right kind of investigation," marking his territory as a genius and the smartest person in the room. Reid would use that.

Everyone always said forgiveness is not forgetting, that the act is as full of grace for the forgiver as the forgiven. This would not hurt her. She gazed at the old man across from her. She knew that she would never see him again, and she also knew she could never absolve him.

Susannah set the table with Provençal cotton linens, the tablecloth pale pumpkin and the napkins printed with faded red and purple flowers, her throat caught. She had wanted to make this meal so special for Sari and Grey. She set out silverware, bright crockery, a Lucite peppermill and a blue container of Fleur-de-Sel de Camargue. She still had Grey's black scallop shells and she arranged them in the center of the table, around a vase of colorful wildflowers.

Sam said. "He goes to the soup kitchen.

Sometimes you have to look at what's really bad," he said, "to see what's really good.

Protection came in many forms. My love of nature and my father, and their love for me, had made me strong and brave, and I had survived.

They say your life flashes before you at the time of death, but for Clea, the lives were not hers, but her grandmother's and her parents'. She thought of how they had loved her, of what a short time they had had together.

Violence merely increases hate . . . adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.' Dr. Martin Luther King

Abusers are weak. They trap women who have gigantic hearts, who want to help these poor, sad wounded birds.

Willard Metcalf, Matilda Browne, Benjamin Morrison, William Merritt Chase, Henry Ward Ranger, and William Chadwick

All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.

but I'll be honest was an indication of guilt, right up there with ly words.

A poet once wrote that cathedrals were never built beside the sea because it was so beautiful it would distract the people from praying.

Being so open requires a sort of innocence. A hope—no, more than a hope . . . a conviction that the world was safe, that people were good. That life was a gift, and nothing moved except as a positive power. Bad things happened—attacks, violence, crimes—yes, unfortunately they did. But they could always be explained and therefore, eventually, understood—so they wouldn't have to happen again. So the people who did them could be helped, and could change.

Mommy and Daddy," Quinn gasped. "Grandma will kill you when she finds out you took it," Allie said. "We weren't ready," Quinn said as if hypnotized. "We weren't ready to scatter their ashes. How could I just leave them there?

He didn't want to think about the people in his life, the people who could make him feel the way he did inside right now. Sad and angry, and as though he had lost something he couldn't quite name.

poetry requires a different kind of view, one where you look inside.