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1 " Every life needs a little space. It leaves room for good things to enter it. "
― Sarah Addison Allen , The Peach Keeper
2 " We're connected, as women. It's like a spiderweb. If one part of that web vibrates, if there's trouble, we all know it, but most of the time we're just too scared, or selfish, or insecure to help. But if we don't help each other, who will? "
3 " Coffee, she'd discovered, was tied to all sorts of memories, different for each person. Sunday mornings, friendly get-togethers, a favorite grandfather long since gone, the AA meeting that saved their life. Coffee meant something to people. Most found their lives were miserable without it. Coffee was a lot like love that way. And because Rachel believed in love, she believed in coffee, too. "
4 " People always say life is too short for regrets. But the truth is, it's too long. "
5 " Happiness is a risk. If you’re not a little scared, then you’re not doing it right. "
6 " It felt as though they were the only people in the world, two young women about to bury the symbol of their helplessness, as if that's all it would take to make them whole again. "
7 " But that would leave Paxton to fend for herself, and the last thing any woman wanted in this kind of situation was to look around and see all the people who could help her doing nothing. "
8 " ...Agatha had declared that her friendship to Georgie still existed, as if it was a living, breathing thing, something that came to life the moment it happened and didn't just go away because they no longer acknowledged it. "
9 " Why were girls in such a hurry to grow up? Agatha would never understand. Childhood was magical. Leaving it behind was a magnificent loss. "
10 " There was a strange but universal understanding among women. On some level all women knew, they all understood, the fear of being outnumbered, of being helpless. It throbbed in their chests when they thought about the times they left stores and were followed. The knocks on their car windows as they were sitting alone at red lights, and strangers asking for rides. Having too much to drink and losing their ability to be forceful enough to just say no. Smiling at strange men coming on to them, not wanting to hurt their feelings, not wanting to make a scene. All women remembered these things, even if they had never happened to them personally. It was a part of their collective unconscious. "
11 " He didn't think he belonged here, so she was making him face some uncomfortable facts. People adapt. People change. You can grow where you're planted. "
12 " Fate never promises to tell you everything up front. You aren't always shown the path in life you're supposed to take. But sometimes when you're really lucky, you meet someone with a map. "
13 " At the end of the evening, Paxton and Willa walked Agatha out to the nurse's 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 Georgie's 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. "
14 " 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 she'd ordered into her bedroom, almost invisible behind tiers of taffeta, as they'd planned for formal dances. She'd 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. "
15 " Those silly girls had no idea what they were really celebrating. They had no idea what it took to bring Agatha and her friends together seventy-five years ago. The Women's Society Club had been about supporting one another, about banding together to protect one another because no one else would. But it had turned into an ugly beast, a means by which rich ladies would congratulate themselves by giving money to the poor. And Agatha had let it happen. All her life, it seemed, she was making up for things she let happen. "
16 " Just as she was about to turn, she caught a whiff of something sweet. She inhaled deeply, instinctively wanting to savor it, but then she nearly choked when it landed on her tongue with a bitter taste. It was so strong she actually made a face.That, her grandmother had described to her once after making a particularly bad lemon cream pie, was exactly what regret tasted like. "
17 " If anyone had been paying attention to the signs, they would have realized that air turns white when things are about to change, that paper cuts mean there's more to what's written on the page than meets the eye, and that birds are always out to protect you from things you don't see. "
18 " As a rule, rich Southern women did not like to be surpassed in either need or beauty. The exception was with their daughters. Daughters of the South were to their mothers what tributaries were to the main rivers they flowed into: their source of immovable strength. "
19 " [...] o amor muda o jogo. "
20 " As superstições são as formas de o homem tentar controlar coisas de que não tem controle algum. "
