Emmalyn

“I am telling her how these streets open us up and remove the part of us most worth keeping: the child left in us.”
― Leila Mottley, Nightcrawling

“Irene Redfield wished, for the first time in her life, that she had not been born a Negro. For the first time she suffered and rebelled because she was unable to disregard the burden of race. It was, she cried silently, enough to suffer as a woman, an individual, on one’s own account, without having to suffer for the race as well. It was a brutality, and undeserved.”
― Nella Larsen, Passing

“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

“Pain, fear, and grief were things that left their mark on people. Even love, that exquisite torturing emotion, left its subtle traces on the countenance.”
― Nella Larsen, Passing