Melissa

“Many white Northerners wielded their power and voting pressure at home, even as they might have pressed for desegregation in the South, understanding that you didn't need a governor at a schoolhouse door if you had the Board of Education officials constantly readjusting school zoning lines to maintain segregated schools. You didn't need a burning cross if the bank used maps made by the Federal Housing Authority to mark Black neighborhoods as "dangerous" for investment and deny Black people home loans. You didn't need white vigilantes if the police were willing to protect and serve certain communities while containing and controlling others.”
― Jeanne Theoharis, A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History

“I have heard all of the stories about girls like me, and I am unafraid to make more of them.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties

“he who looks too hard for any particular thing, though he may find it, will certainly miss the most wondrous and strange things he passes, though they stare him in the face.”
― Jesse Ball, Census

“When you told me that I want too much, I considered how much you take.”
― Terese Marie Mailhot, Heart Berries