If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.

We never shape the world . . . the world shapes us.

Race is the least reliable information you can have about someone. It's real information, but it tells you next to nothing.

Life that crawled, life that slunk and crept and never closed its eyes. Life that burrowed and scurried, and life so still it was indistinguishable from the ivy stems on which it lay. Birth, life, and death - each took place on the hidden side of a leaf.

Everything depends on knowing how much,” she said, and “Good is knowing when to stop.

They seemed to have taken all of their smoothly cultivated ignorance, their exquisitely learned self-hatred, their elaborately designed hopelessness and sucked it all up into a fiery cone of scorn that had burned for ages in the hollows of their minds― cooled ―and spilled over lips of outrage, consuming whatever was in its path.

If you can't count, they can cheat you. If you can't read, they can beat you.