In the dugout we were acting like was a 0-0 ball game and we knew we needed more runs.

I was praying that it would go out. For a while I thought it was just going to be a big pop up.

I don't want to party my life away. If you aren't living for something, you are wasting your life.

Weekends with friends, Friday nights, Saturday nights. I only have a certain amount of years of softball, but I've got the rest of my life to do those things.

I love the competitiveness. I like to get out of the 'girl zone' and be a beast for a moment, to prove myself to people.

Annie, who up until this very day had always felt like a child--which is why she could not marry, she could not be a wife--now felt quietly ancient. She thought how for years onstage she had used the image of walking up the dirt road holding her father's hand, the snow-covered fields spread around them, the woods in the distance, joy spilling through her--how she had used this scene to have tears immediately come to her eyes, for the happiness of it, and the loss of it. And now she wondered if it had even happened, if the road had ever been narrow and dirt, if her father had ever held her hand and said that his family was the most important thing to him.