My grandfather was a Pentecostal preacher. It was a sin to even pluck your eyebrows, and they thought it was a sin for me to be there looking like Jezebel.
Sometimes you could see the scars and sometimes you couldn’t. But everybody had them.
She cared so much about her words, her creative expression, when what mattered to everyone else was the bottom line. Everything was a business – even art. She’d written the songs, but she wouldn’t be able to truly own them. Not if she wanted the rest of the world to hear them.
We can’t just hope for a brighter day, we have to work for a brighter day. Love too often gets buried in a world of hurt and fear. And we have to work to dig it out so we can share it with our family, our friends, and our neighbors.
When a girl didn’t have anyone to stand up for her, that girl had to stand up for her own damn self.
It would be better to have a new enemy, wouldn’t it, instead of an old one? The demons of the past were the hardest to slay.
I’m back where I started, she marveled. But now everything’s different.
You don’t even have to believe in anything to be good to people. You should just know you should be a good human being.
I like you. And that’s not something I say very often.
If you want to make it in this town, being talented is just one little tiny part of the battle. Fearlessness is mandatory. And shamelessness sure as hell don’t hurt.
I look back on all that now, and I realize this helped to build my character. It helped me build my own strength. So even the bad times were good. There were good times as well as bad times. But that’s how memories are made, and that’s why I’m sitting here today.
It’s like a battery that has to have a positive and a negative. One doesn’t work without the other. You’ve gotta have the good and the bad in order to know what’s right, and in order to know what’s real and what ain’t.
She’d kept too many secrets and abandoned too many people, and that wasn’t even the worst of it.
She cared so much about her words, her creative expression, when what mattered to everyone else was the bottom line.
Ruthanna said, her interest piqued. Maya shook her head.
Because books, my friends, are true magic bound between two covers.
Is it easy? She sang to herself. No it ain’t can I fix it? No I can’t.
Is it easy? She sang again. No it ain’t. Can I fix it? No I can’t. But I sure ain’t gonna take it lyin’ down.
When a girl didn’t have anyone to stand up for her, that girl had to stand up for her own damn self. She didn’t expect that hunky Ruthanna groupie to understand. “Your shoes look like they could kill a person, Ruthanna,” AnnieLee said, giggling. Ruthanna kicked out a leg to show off a pointy-toed stiletto. “They’re killing me,” she said. Then she brushed a red-gold curl away from her cheek and said, “I like you.
Don’t ever be late. It’s like proclaiming that your time is more important than someone else’s.
I think it’s so important to instill in children to have faith and to know there are great things out there. Greatness is out there, greatness you can tap into. But it has to start from in your heart.