"It seemed only a few months ago that she had had braces on her teeth, crooked spectacles that constantly slipped down her nose, unruly mouse-brown hair, and a wistful certainty that she would never grow up to be a beautiful and self-confident woman like her mother. Her inner vision of herself was still more the adolescent Meg than the attractive young woman she had become" (Chapter 1, p. 4).

" 'The Western world has used up more than our share of the world's energy, the world's resources, and we must be punished...we are responsible for the acutely serious oil and coal shortage, the defoliation of trees, the grave danger to the atmosphere, and he is going to make us pay'" (Chapter 1, p. 10).

"At Tara in this fateful hour / I place all Heaven with its power / And the sun with its brightness / And the snow with its whiteness / And the fire...