Armani

“I marveled at the bonds between us--the way we shortened our words, or spoke, sometimes, with no words at all, the shared memories of corn-shucking, of hurricanes, of heroes who did not live in books, but in our talk; an entire world of our own, hidden away from them, and to be part of that world, I felt even then, was to be in on a secret, a secret that was in you. There were neither Quality nor Low among us, no jockey clubs to be ejected rom, and this was its own America, was its own grandeur--”
― Ta-Nahisi Coates

“The sharp smell of her was still in our room, on our bed, and I tried to follow that scent down the alleys of my mind, but while all the twists and turns that marked my short life were clear before me, my mother appeared only as fog and smoke. I tried to recall her face, and when it did not come, I thought of her arms, her hands, but there was only smoke, and when I searched to remember her corrections, her affections, I found only smoke. She'd gone from that warm, quilt of memory to the cold library of fact.”
― Ta-Nahisi Coates

“I slept. And then I awoke, late that same afternoon, I awoke full in the knowledge that I was alone. I have now seen a great many children in the same place I found myself in that day, orphans, feeling themselves abandoned and left open before all the elements of the world, and I have seen how some explode in tantrum while others walk in an almost stupor, how some cry for days and others move with an uncanny focus, addressing only the moment before them. Some part of them has died, and like surgeons, they know that amputation must be immediate.”
― Ta-Nahisi Coates

“I can think of no better way to meet a girl than to see her through the eyes of the story she loves best.”
― Beth Revis, A World Without You