“Sure, I liked girls but I was always too terrified to speak to them unless we were arguing or I was calling them stupidos, which was one of my favorite words that year.”

“Tell her that you love her hair, that you love her skin, her lips, because, in truth, you love them more than you love your own.”

“Don't panic. Say, Hey, no problem. Run a hand through your hair like the whiteboys do even though the only thing that runs easily through your hair is Africa.”

“We are here on earth for a while.”

“It's who you is when folks knocks at the door of your heart what counts. Hide the past and it gives them what's jealous of you the power to bring you undone.”

“In the dark , everything is scary”

“They had killed themselves over our dying forests, over manatees maimed by propellers as they surfaced to drink from garden hoses; they had killed themselves at the sight of used tires stacked high...”

“The world seemed to shimmer a little at the edges.”

“If we cannot accept the importance of the world, which considers itself important, if in the midst of that world our laughter finds no echo, we have but one choice: to take the world as a whole and...”