She didn't even know how dangerous the truth could be, all the tiny, shattering seeds it carried.

It was the first time I'd ever said the words to another person, and the sound of them broke open my heart.

Make the world better. Take the meanness out of people's hearts.

How could I choose someone who would force me to give up my own small reach for meaning? I chose myself, and without consolation.

The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters.

I'm tired of carrying around the weight of the world. I'm just going to lay it down now. It's my time to die, and it's your time to live. Don't mess it up.

Up until then I'd thought that white people and colored people getting along was the big aim, but after that I decided everybody being colorless together was a better plan. I thought of that policeman, Eddie Hazelwurst, saying I'd lowered myself to be in this house of colored women, and for the very life of me I couldn't understand how it had turned out this way, how colored women had become the lowest ones on the totem pole. You only had to look at them to see how special they were, like hidden royalty among us. Eddie Hazelwurst. What a shitbucket.