How a mother comes to love her child, her caring at all for this thing that's made her heavy, lopsided and slow, this thing that made her wish she were dead ... that's the miracle.

Sometimes, for a moment, everything is just as you need it to be. The memories of such moments live in the heart, waiting for the time you need to think of them, if only to remind yourself that for a short while, everything had been fine, and might be so again.

A girl should command attention, not suffer it.

Fostering your sense of creativity can give you feelings of freedom, delight and passion. It can help you see your life in a new light and help you to tackle situations that you thought were hopeless. When you express yourself through creative action you find gifts such as: happiness, self worth, healing, and inner joy.

No matter what you do, someone always knew you would.

If women lose the right to say where and how they birth their children, then they will have lost something that's as dear to life as breathing.

A compelling and important story of First Word War Scotland, a time when women redefined the word hope as the world was losing its innocence. Andrea MacPherson writes beautifully, balancing the lives of her characters between history and the poetry of gesture, secrets and love.