Adrian

“I don’t regret my alcoholism anymore. Before I left California my youngest son, Joel, came to breakfast. The same son I used to steal from, who had told me I wasn’t his mother. I cooked cheese blintzes; we drank coffee and read the paper, muttering to each other about Rickey Henderson, George Bush. Then he went to work. He kissed me and said So long, Ma. So long, I said.”
― Lucia Berlin, A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories

“A grudging, mean little message meant just for me: Don’t be too full of yourself. Never ever take up too much space.”
― ReShonda Tate, The Queen of Sugar Hill: A Novel of Hattie McDaniel

“I wondered if I would have to confess that I had shared a room with a heathen. I paused then, in my meditation, to pray that Papa would never find out that Papa-Nnukwu had visited and that I had shared a room with him.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Purple Hibiscus

“He was still smiling as I quietly turned and went back to the bedroom. I never smiled after we said the rosary back home. None of us did.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Purple Hibiscus