And that's where the whole trouble is. We're too much alike to understand each other because we don't even understand our own selves.

The neighborhood stores are an important part of a city child's life.

Everything, decided Francie after that first lecture, was vibrant with life and there was no death in chemistry. She was puzzled as to why learned people didn't adopt chemistry as a religion.

Because the child must have a valuable thing which is called imagination. The child must have a secret world in which live things that never were. It is necessary that she believe. She must start out believing in things not of this world. Then when the world becomes too ugly for living in, the child can reach back and live in her imagination.

But she needs me more than she needs him and I guess being needed is almost as good as being loved. Maybe better.

The world was hers for the reading.