... the real heroes of race and culture would always be the people who stepped out of their own line to make a larger circle.

our limbs which had already traveled far beyond her world, carrying the click of distances in the smooth, untroubled soles of their shoes.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous, or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular, but because it never forgot what it could do.

Being good felt like a heavy coat, so I took it off.

It was terrible when a single conversation with someone determined your whole future relationship.

Maybe when your mother died young, you became instantly old.

The writing of Kathleen McGookey shines more brightly than most fine things we feel pleasure to read. Celebrate it!