Maxine

“Being human?” She smirks. “Be wary of a man who you don’t want bringing you a cool towel when you’re about to pass out from explosive diarrhea.”
― Rachel Howzell Hall, These Toxic Things

“No, the sadness will soften, its edges will become less rough. In time missing him will be the way you love him.”
― M.J. Rose, The Witch of Painted Sorrows

“They'd both learned that a memory is a fact that has been dyed and trimmed and rinsed so many times that it comes out looking almost unrecognizable to anyone else who was in that room or anyone who was standing on the grass beneath that telephone pole.”
― Mary Beth Keane, Ask Again, Yes

“Fourth avenue was a red dog road. Red dog is burned out trash coal. If the coal had too much slate, it was piled in a slag heap and burned. The coal burned up, but the slate didn't The heat turned it every shade of red and orange and lavender you could imagine. When the red on our road got buried under rutted dirt or mud, dump trucks would pour new loads of the sharp-edged rock. My best friend Sissy and I followed along after the truck, looking for fossils. We found ferns and shells and snails, and once I found a perfect imprint of a four-leaf clover.”
― Drema Hall Berkheimer, Running on Red Dog Road: And Other Perils of an Appalachian Childhood