Laura Amy Schlitz

Most of the time when you laugh, it's because something is amiss - clumsy or wrong or sad - but when you laugh at a kitten, you laugh of pure joy.

But I think the most important thing those books gave me was a kind of faith. My books promised me that life wasn__ just made up of workaday tasks and prosaic things. The world is bigger and more colorful and more important than that.

One day, I was at my grandmother's house, and I found diaries that she kept as a young girl. I opened one to a page that had flowers glued inside. In her childish handwriting, my grandmother wrote, 'Pap died today. I am very sad.' The fact that this was true and that I could see the withered flowers made a huge impression on me.

I think I would rather have a cat than a sweetheart, after all. They are less trouble, and even the handsomest sweetheart is sadly lacking in fur.

He pried Clara's arms loose and stood up, smoothing his wrinkled coat. Clara looked straight into his face. Her eyelids were red, but her gaze was like a lance. Dr. Wintermute had a sudden, uncomfortable conviction that she had seen into his soul. It was a look he was to remember often in the weeks to come.

I quite lost myself, gazing at this work of art. . . It thrilled me, that sculpture. For one thing, it reminded me that in my new life, I may have other such experiences. I needn't always be an ignorant girl. The world will offer itself to me like a chalice brimming with immortal wine, and I will quaff from it.