Quotes from Nancy E. Turner

It is strange to have this little girl who is my own flesh and blood and yet she seems so separate from me.

I read more of Treasure Island to him, and it pleased him a great deal. It seems to me that there are so many lonely people in this world, and so little of life is kind and good. In a way, I am thankful for this flood, since without it, I might never have talked to him much, and Mason is a nice fellow.

A lad who wears his every thought upon his face is asking for someone to change his opinions.

I can see being angry with folks. Shoot, I'd about hang Chess on the laundry line any day of the week, but I don't shun him. Shunning's no way to get over and done with your fussing. It just drives in a sword that won't come out unless the person holding it pulls first.

Life is short and must be lived.

Stay outside, looking in. See those two poor people. Sad girl. Sad boy. Sadder than a movie, two people parting. My heart was behind a huge concrete dam with no gates, no opening, not even a hairline crack. On this side those people only look sad. They feel no pain. On this side.

I never want to be in a place where no one would come forward to say to a judge that they have known me as righteous. A life well-lived, in some respects, needs witnesses

A woman who dreams of a good home with a man who holds for her only a poor love is putting a fifty-dollar saddle on a twenty-dollar horse. She'd be far better off single than riding with him.

I rode toward Rudolfo Maldonado's house, planning to murder him before he got his morning shave.

But there is no easy way to mourn a child.

I have a hard time sleeping at night and a hard time staying awake in the day. Being older is harder work that I thought I'd be, that's all.

I know all these people are so busy because they love each other and me. We are a noisy crowd of love.

Children are a burden to a mother, but not the way a heavy box is to a mule. Our children weigh hard on my heart, and thinking about them growing up honest and healthy, or just living to grow up at all, makes a load in my chest that is bigger than the safe at the bank, and more valuable to me than all the gold inside it.

But I saved my breath. The likes of her isn't going to listen nor be changed in the mind just from hearing sense. Some people sense is wasted on and that's purely a fact.

It's easy to act honorable when things are coming along and all your pastures are green."Sarah Agnes Prine

My rosebush shouts beauty to the world.

A week later, I walked to Gwyneth's house. She and Dorothy and I shared tea and we wept for Jacob. We talked. We smiled a little. Then I left and waited for Cullah, and thought what a great emptiness was left by Jacob's passing. At last, I sat at the front door, on the chair where Patience had died. I held my hands folded at my heart, and ached for all who had passed from my world

want to wear scarlet velvet and slippers and lace gloves and ride in a stage instead of wearing calluses on my hands driving a team like a man. It is not her fault. She is right. The Lord looks on the inside, although people look on the outside. That man is measuring cloth

It seems to me that any time there are men making a war, somewhere there are women and children at home waiting and worrying.

I realized that poverty was a kind of captivity.

I dream of land, cut only where streams glistened with birdsong wander through quiet hills burnt hard by the scrape of wind, and of a porch from which a single road leads only homeward.

I wondered someday if the devil might wake up and see he got the wrong girl, what will happen then?

Or were we all only part of each other's lives for a moment, putting down our swords long enough to win a war against a common enemy? Would we be friends if we'd met any other way?

A friendly silence can speak between two who will walk together a long way, she said.