“Once she kissed me, my heart slowed, and every muscle in my body relaxed. How much I needed her terrified me. -pg 252/ARC”

“I looked at Mommy but quickly shook my head. "I don't want to miss her."Becky put her soft, warm hand on my shoulder, just like Mommy used to when I was upset. "Your mom wants to be here with you. ...”

“Even though we'd put each other through hell, we'd found heaven. Maybe it was more than a couple of sinners like us deserved, but I wasn't going to complain.”

“Oh! Thanks for the public service announcement about what not to do in college, Mr. Eighteen-year-old-frat-boy-with-eleventy-billion-'serious'-girlfriends-under-his-belt! Get in the fucking car. Yo...”

“Cry if you must. Scream. Get it all out of your system, and then we'll have fun. It won't last forever, but it will keep you busy for tonight.”

“Losing Abby wasn't a story I remembered from early childhood--it was in my face, debilitating me like a sickness, robbing me of my senses and physically, excruciatingly painful. My mother's words e...”

“To pursue kingdom understanding of what makes its lifestyle work on earth ask specific kingdom questions”

“[T]he world we live in is governed by the most revolting bunch of crooks ever to defile the soil of this planet... [You] must never take them seriously, which is exactly what they want.”

“Success is a lifestyle.”

“No black woman writer in this culture can write "too much". Indeed, no woman writer can write "too much"...No woman has ever written enough.”

“When you reduce a woman to writing, she makes you think of a thousand other women”

“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”