Even the smartest person in the world could be scared by what he did or did not understand.
It was one of those moments where I knew we were not having the conversation that we needed to be having. And since I didn’t really know what to say, never having crossed this particular bridge between thought and deed before, I pressed my and against the thick ridge in his pants. He backed away from me.
On the contrary. May I be so bold as to ask you a question? When you were singled out and asked to not interfere with the care of a white baby, did any of your colleagues come to your defense?
It’s funny, how fast life changes. One minute you are present, and the next, you might find yourself futilely trying to get back to the world you were once part of. You might find yourself looking for people who can no longer hear you. You are in the world, but not of it.
If you ask me who Ruth Jefferson was a month ago, I would have said she’s a good nurse, and she’s a good mother. But now I have people telling me I wasn’t a good nurse. And if I can’t put a casserole on the table and cloth on your back, then I have to second guess myself as a mother too. If you don’t let me do this, if you don’t let me take care of you, then I don’t know who i’m suppose to be anymore.
All mothers worry, but Black mothers, we have to worry a little bit more.
When Thomas left, it was with the feeling of a summer romance – a trinket that I could take out and examine for the rest of my life, the same way I might save a seashell from a beach vacation or the ticket from my first Broadway musical.
And for God’s sake brush your hair before you go. It looks like there’s a woodland creature nesting inside.
It was so much easier to hate them, than to hate myself.” My.
If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.
Do you think there will ever be a time when racism doesn’t exist?’ ‘No, because that means white people would have to buy into being equal. Who’d choose to dismantle the system that makes them special?
Miriam collapses in front of me. I have seen it dozens of times, strong mothers who simply go to pieces, like a starched sheet that melts at a breath of steam. She rocks back and forth, her arms crossed so tight at her waist that it doubles her over.
I read once, in a silly women’s magazine at the dentist, that when we like someone, our pupils dilate. And that we tend to like people whose pupils are dilated when they look at us. It’s an endless cycle: We want the people who want us.
Indeed, when pro-lifers came to him to terminate a pregnancy and told him that they did not believe in abortion, Louie Ward said only one thing: Scoot down.
Virgil looks as comfortable in the police station as a vegetarian at a barbecue festival.
Put ten people together in a Laundromat and chances are you won’t be the one who’s worst off.
The world is a place where the extraordinary can sit just beside the ordinary with the thinnest of boundaries.
When you expect something, you’re sure to be disappointed. I learned that a long time ago.
I wonder if anyone works any harder at anything than kids do at being popular.
I have this math teacher, Mr. Allen. He said that when you’re a point, all you see is the point. When you’re a line, all you see is the line and the point. When you’re in three dimensions, you see three dimensions and lines and points. Just because we can’t see a fourth dimension doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It just means we haven’t reached it yet.