Rachel Field

Oh, well, it might look like a patterned world, laid out in prim design, but to those living there it could never be so simple. They were as alive as she: that old peasant contriving to outwit the cold; that woman anxiously counting her comical flock lest one goose escape her vigilance; all those who slept, or toiled, or loved under the low-hung roofs or the sharp turrets. Those people out there, if they caught sight of her own face pressed close to the window pane, might be speculating about her. To them she was part of the pattern of the lumbering train with its trail of smoke and little boxlike carriages. Perhaps they envied her, riding at ease to distant Paris. How little they knew of that! How little she herself know what awaited her at the end of the journey!

The more one suffered and lived, the more one had known of joy and grief, the deeper the response must be if an artist were great enough to summon it.

Too much good fortune can make you smug and unaware. Happiness should be like an oasis, the greener for the desert that surrounds it.

The sight of a cage is only frightening to the bird that has once been caught.