Nightcrawling Quotes

“She is the bottom of the ocean, where all the magic hides beneath too many layers of dark and water and salt.”
― Leila Mottley, Nightcrawling

“The sky takes each flurry and sends it right back with just a hint of music lingering in the echo, a belt from some invisible trombone, the lowest note on an organ drawn out. Sound after sound flooding from my body like war-zone fire on a cold day, Mama rubbing the tightness out of my jaw, melting the tears back into my skin, until there is no more noise and my chest is heaving, out of breath and raw and Mama is holding me and the cars have not stopped, have not slowed, all of it, all the time racing past us while we are stuck between the sky and asphalt that does not know our names and Mama will walk me to the bus stop and leave me there and we will not speak of what the freeway does to us when it is nighttime and we are ghosts. But Mama taught me how to swim and I can see underwater. I can see.”
― Leila Mottley, Nightcrawling