Divining Women by Kaye Gibbons

"The best things," she said, "are invisible, and invisible things are the only things safe to believe." -- page 28

But the reality was that she did nothing all day but exist from one minute to the next on air that seemed begrudgingly meted out in portions so small she could barely keep enough force pushed together to sustain her very polite melancholy. -- page 88

During that early phase of her journeys, she also told Mother that she had at last found the right question, which was necessary to have before she looked for the right answer. "I asked myself, very simply," she wrote, "if the life I had been living was the one I wanted to live. It wasn't. I wanted to be loved and I wanted to be free. If that could not be found, I realized that I would have to be happy alone." -- page 107