"When they got to the farm half and hour later (they had to go slowly because of the bits of four-day-old snow that had drifted over the roads), Walter was out in the barn with Joey, and Lillian and Henry were playing a game with Lois. The kitchen was cold, the range hadn't been lit in three days, and Rosanna suddenly missed the dull luxury of the hospital. but she knew this was her life. Better to be immersed in it than to see it from afar."

"But it was strange, Rosanna thought, the little choices you had to make that you never foresaw, such as was it easier to be closer to the bathroom or to the kitchen, did you stow an invalid who could barely move upstairs, where she was out of the way, or did you have her right where everyone who came in would go over to her and take her hand and say hello and then include her in the conversation?"

- Some Luck, Jane Smiley

"Do you think we’re on a path to a goal, so that’s great progress, or do you get really disappointed that we’ve made so little on some fronts?

- I thought, in the beginning, if we got the majority we would win. I didn’t understand we don’t exactly have a democracy, people with a lot of money and clout make more noise…One of the things I learned at Houston from the women from Indian country there, many different tribes and nations, was a saying, “it takes four generations to heal one act of violence.” I think we need to think in the long-term much more than we do."

- Gloria Steinem