Stuart needs "space" and "time," as if this were physics and not a human relationship.

Down in the national news section, there's an article on a new pill, the 'Valium' they're calling it, 'to help women cope with everyday challenges.' God, I could use about ten of those little pills right now.

All my life I'd been told what to believe about politics, coloreds, being a girl. But with Constantine's thumb pressed in my hand, I realized I actually had a choice in what I could believe.

I have decided not to die.

There is no trickier subject for a writer from the South than that of affection between a black person and a white one in the unequal world of segregation. For the dishonesty upon which a society is founded makes every emotion suspect, makes it impossible to know whether what flowed between two people was honest feeling or pity or pragmatism.(Howell Raines's Pulitzer Prize winning article "Grady's Gift")-Sockett admired this quote and used it in her summary.

Who knew paper and ink could be so vicious

I always thought insanity would be a dark, bitter feeling, but it is drenching and delicious if you really roll around in it.