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“When you love somebody you decide what you can take and what will kill you and work backward from what will kill you.”
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
“The sting of not having or not having enough bores a pain black hole that sucks all the other of life’s injuries into one sharp stinging gap that you don’t need a scientist to remind you may be bottomless.”
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
“She wasn't about to 'come on'. Men tried to make you believe in your own crazy. If you are hysterical they don't have to see you as an equal, look you in the eye like a person they have to respect. It suited them to make you think that all the shit they pulled, all the lies they told, were in your head. The only crazy part was that most women did believe their men or chose to pretend. Most kept on believing right up to the point the men walked out the door or killed them. (178)”
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
“Everyone says that reading is a good thing, but Ava had started to wonder. People look at you with suspicion if they see you reading, like the reading itself shames or indicts them, like it is a plot against them.”
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
“But whatever you do, don’t stay still, you’ll get stuck. That will unravel you.”
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
“You can't let people know what you dream- especially if you can't get it. You knowing that they know opes a wound in you, an embarrassing naked space that you can't let just anybody witness.”
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
“You think love leaves? You think you are ever free? Then you are a child or a fool. Flee in the dark, spend a lifetime away, never say its name, never say its name, but one day, or if you are very unlucky, every day, it will whisper yours. And, you know you want to hear your name. Say it, love. Please say it. (7)”
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
“You knowing that they know opens a wound in you, an embarrassing naked space that you can’t let just anybody witness.”
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
“The pain of the loss, the true loss of youth, the change of life, THE CHANGE, the terrible sure feeling of being shunted out of the everyday progress of living, the move from a player on the stage to a member of the audience—until finally, the fear that crept and inched into your mind, then your soul, that your life had amounted to too little. Like some version of that joke, life was terrible and in such small portions. And finally, the realization that you hadn’t performed enough or well enough and now everyone you loved would suffer. Why hadn’t anyone said something? Of course older women had said in their way. By way of warning and encouragement, they had told Sylvia not to get old. “Don’t get old!” they’d said. Like anyone ever in the history of time had had any intention of that.”
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
“That love we have for mothers has to be cut with vinegar, and maybe even acid. Otherwise, it will overwhelm us. She will overwhelm us.”
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
“The sting of not having or not having enough bores a pain black hole that sucks all the other life's injuries into one stinging gap that you don't need a scientist to remind you may be bottomless”
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
“These dogs didn't bother to bond with us, but stuck out their paws, not to shake hands but so we could slit their wrists and get it the hell over with. (p.51)”
― We Are Taking Only What We Need
― We Are Taking Only What We Need
“What you got and can count on your fingers can give you a cushion, a bank account, a security against universal losses. Nobody has to know the hollow spaces you shock yourself by living through.”
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
“Life is sad, but there's some good moments and you have to live for those. That's all we got. Sylvia couldn't remember the last time she waited for a good moment instead of holding on through the bad ones for the next wave of bad to shock her into a different kind of sadness.”
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
“He was dumb, that’s all there was to it. Pretty didn’t keep him from being a dumb ass. Henry”
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
“You can't take back worry. You can't. But if you could, I would have sucked up every second I spent thinking about Greg in that cell. Every second I wondered if he was all right. I would have taken my visit back. That wasn't nothing. Jail is a scary place for decent people.”
― We Are Taking Only What We Need
― We Are Taking Only What We Need
“The stories in my collection are about young African American women trying to find their homes in the world. The stories are set in North Carolina in the new south, post-segregation, post-Jim Crow, post-lawful separation of races, but those ghosts endure. My characters are usually poor, but not content to be so. They are usually watchers, but at crucial moments are compelled to act. They are girls determined to be proud women. The world has a place for them and they will find it. And some of them will find that place that can finally feel like home.”
― We Are Taking Only What We Need
― We Are Taking Only What We Need
“The mission of high school was to come from money and have great hair, but blend in and be invisible and envied by everyone. “I”
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
“I know you're here because you think this is home. But you can't go home because there is none. It's just you trying to make it in a place that holds some memory for you. That's not the same as home. People can be like home sometimes and that's if you are very, very lucky. Are you hearing me? (101)”
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
“You think love leaves? You think you are ever free? Then you are a child or a fool. Flee”
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
“You get yourself caught up with the police, in the system anything can happen to you. You know that don’t you?” “I know.” “I’m”
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
― No One Is Coming to Save Us
“We lost track of her after that. A cousin said she went to California with a friend. Somebody told us she was right under our noses in Lumberton. I don't know for sure. I do know that she thinks of us. Though I doubt she could afford to spend every single day doing it. No matter what, you have to figure out how to live in the day you have, not the ones you can't get back. Soon, I may look her up, just to let her know things turned out. That she doesn't have to feel bad about anything. That life runs in different speeds depending on the situation and some times and days and moments get away from you before you really know what's what. I'd tell her that I wouldn't mind being her friend. Family ought to be able to be friends, I'd say, hoping I sounded wise and centered, like a woman with her head on straight. I wouldn't talk about missing her or sad old times, or the hours we spent explaining her to ourselves and especially not the quiet nights in the dark trying the best we know how to remember anything she ever did or said that made us laugh.”
― We Are Taking Only What We Need
― We Are Taking Only What We Need
