The trouble with morning is that it comes well before noon.

But if we are to remain a great empire, we must have a greater understanding of the hearts and minds of others.

No one had ever said anything like that to Evie. Her parents always wanted to advise or instruct or command. They were good people, but they needed the world to bend to them, to fit into their order of things. Evie had never really quite fit, and when she tried, she’d just pop back out, like a doll squeezed into a too-small box.

- 'Music opens your soul, makes you ready.' - 'Ready for what?' - He smiles big. 'Exactly.

Prepared to fly, even if she has to loose her legs to do it

God doesn't like lesbians," Grandma Huberman hised, throwing the magazine in the trash. Jennifer knew what lesbian meant, and she knew she probably was one. But she couldn't understand why God would hold that against her or against Monica Mathers, who'd never started a war or killed anybody, and whose deadeye three-pointers were straight-up amazing. After all, hadn't God made both of them? But people were like that, she'd noticed. They'd invoke Godly privilege at the weirdest of times and for the most stupid reasons.

Life don’t come to you, Memphis. You gotta take it. We have to take it. Because ain’t nobody handing it to us.