Out of the Easy

by Ruta Sepetys

One day when I was fourteen, I told Charlie that I hated Mother. “Don’t hate her, Jo,” he told me. “Feel sorry for her. She’s not near as smart as you. She wasn’t born with your compass, so she wanders around, bumping into all sorts of walls. That’s sad.”

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever . . . it will never pass into nothingness.”

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.

I love you the more in that I believe you have liked me for my own sake and for nothing else.

“There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.” —Sir Francis Bacon