“Don't be scared," Willa Mae said.I looked at her. "Aren't you scared?"Willa Mae looked at me and said, "Shoot. Only thing I'm afraid of is that I'm going to do something I'll regret.""Being scared ...”

“Why did you marry Dad, Mom?" My mother sniffled through her nose, looked at me, then smiled. "I wanted something more and he was it. We both had big dreams." "That must have taken a lot of courage,...”

“We stayed all day long. We closed our eyes and paryed, which we had not doen together in a long time. The nurse came in and out of the room. Everything felt awful and I wondered why the whole world...”

“Seems like nothing's getting safer or better," I said. "Seems like everything's getting worse." "Maybe that's what's gotta happen," Willa Mae said. "Maybe everything's gotta break lose and fall apa...”

“She loved him, even though it was so hard to love anybody else after loving my dad. I think I knew this before she did.”

“The self-congratulatory popular account insists that Dr. King called on the nation to fully accept its own creed, and the walls came a-tumbling down. This conventional narrative is soothing, moving...”

“Senator John Stennis:The civil rights movement did more to free the white man that the black man. ... It freed my soul.”

“The greatest evil in our country today is...ignorance...We need to be taught to study rather than to believe.”

“Louis said, "There ought to be a comic book about geeks."Dr. McNaughton said, "There are books about geeks."He said, "There are?"Dr. McNaughton said, "I'll read you some Faulkner sometime. I'll rea...”

“Imagine," she said, after registering, "a whole city of gorgeous Italian guys. They can say anything to me, and it'll be sexy." "You'll be so easy," Rashmi said. "Would you like-ah to order-ah the ...”

“Jennifer now understood the meaning of the cadence: the black and white drawing, the watercolor painting,and the notes. The cadence had at last developed into a concerto for violin, the instrument ...”

“I spent the period reading the first novel assigned for English. And wow. If I hadn't realized I was in France yet, I do now. Because Like Water for Chocolate has sex in it. LOTS of sex.”