Quotes by Sarah Addison Allen

Snow flurries began to fall and they swirled around peoples legs like house cats. It was magical, this snow globe world.

Like magic, she felt him getting nearer, felt it like a pull in the pit of her stomach. It felt like hunger but deeper, heavier. Like the best kind of expectation. Ice cream expectation. Chocolate expectation.

She went to the window. A fine sheen of sugary frost covered everything in sight, and white smoke rose from chimneys in the valley below the resort town. The window opened to a rush of sharp early November air that would have the town in a flurry of activity, anticipating the tourists the colder weather always brought to the high mountains of North Carolina. She stuck her head out and took a deep breath. If she could eat the cold air, she would. She thought cold snaps were like cookies, like gingersnaps. In her mind they were made with white chocolate chunks and had a cool, brittle vanilla frosting. They melted like snow in her mouth, turning creamy and warm.

Sitting at the old patio table she’d cleared of leaves, she smiled and leaned back. The stars looked twisted in the limbs of the trees, like Christmas lights. She felt like part of the hollow around her was filling. She’d come here with too many expectations.

Business was doing well, because all the locals knew that dishes made from the flowers that grew around the apple tree in the Waverley garden could affect the eater in curious ways. The biscuits with lilac jelly, the lavender tea cookies, and the tea cakes made with nasturtium mayonnaise the Ladies Aid ordered for their meetings once a month gave them the ability to keep secrets. The fried dandelion buds over marigold-petal rice, stuffed pumpkin blossoms, and rose-hip soup ensured that your company would notice only the beauty of your home and never the flaws. Anise hyssop honey butter on toast, angelica candy, and cupcakes with crystallized pansies made children thoughtful. Honeysuckle wine served on the Fourth of July gave you the ability to see in the dark. The nutty flavor of the dip made from hyacinth bulbs made you feel moody and think of the past, and the salads made with chicory and mint had you believing that something good was about to happen, whether it was true or not.

He stood there, glowing like the sun, and stared at her like she was the unbelievable one.

You cant change where you came from, but you can change where you go from here.

Fate never promises to tell you everything up front. You arent always shown the path in life youre supposed to take. But sometimes when youre really lucky, you meet someone with a map.

Dont be vain. What you look like doesnt matter. Its the deed that matters.

He hadnt meant to get so angry at Morgan. He didnt often get angry at other people. There was no sense in it. The person you were angry at was rarely ever repentant. Now, getting angry with yourself had some merit. It showed you had sense enough to chastise the one person who had any hope of benefiting from it. And he was plenty angry with himself. For many things.

Sometimes its difficult to tell what side of the moral compass we are all on. There are so many things to factor in.

At the end of the evening, Paxton and Willa walked Agatha out to the nurses car, after Agatha had given them a blind tour of the Madam, pointing out by feel and memory everything she remembered about the house. She and Georgie sliding down the banister and their skirts flying up. Playing dolls in Georgies room. Having pineapple upside-down cake the Jacksons cook would make in a cast-iron frying pan, so that the brown sugar on top turned crispy. A slide-away secret compartment in the bookcase where they used to leave notes for each other.

When Paxton was a teenager, her friends had even envied her relationship with her mother. Everyone knew that neither Paxton nor Sophia scheduled anything on Sunday afternoons, because that was popcorn-and-pedicures time, when mother and daughter sat in the family room and watched sappy movies and tried out beauty products. And Paxton could remember her mother carrying dresses shed ordered into her bedroom, almost invisible behind tiers of taffeta, as theyd planned for formal dances. Shed loved helping Paxton pick out what to wear. And her mother had exquisite taste. Paxton could still remember dresses her mother wore more than twenty-five years ago. Imprinted in her memory were shiny blue ones, sparkly white ones, wispy rose-colored ones.

No one should ever compromise the dignity of another human being.

I know hes a good baby... but the challenge is to raise him into a good boy, then a good man.

Theres not a lot I can fix for her anymore. Band-Aid and bedtime story days are almost over. This, I can fix with a simple Welcome.

Whenever I would get too nosy as a child, my grandmother would say, When you learn someone elses secret, your own secrets arent safe. Dig up one, release them all.

Bay remembered the Waverley house full of pumpkin pie scents in the fall. There had been mountains of maple cakes with violets hidden inside, lakes of butternut soups with chrysanthemum petals floating on top.

Mary had become anxious in her old age, and she hated being away from the house for long. Shed hold the girls hands tightly and calm herself by telling them what she would make for first frost that year- pork tenderloins with nasturtiums, dill potatoes, pumpkin bread, chicory coffee. And the cupcakes, of course, with all different frostings, because what was first frost without frosting? Claire had loved it all, but Sydney had only listened when their grandmother talked of frosting. Caramel, rosewater-pistachio, chocolate almond.

People like us will never really understand, Evanelle said. We fell in love with the men we were supposed to be with right off the bat. But women with broken hearts, they change.