"He wants me to be myself like a leopard might be herself in a city zoo. Inert, waiting to be fed. Not out in the wild, with tendon in her teeth."

"you are a loud, impulsive, persistent seeker of justice, and that makes people uncomfortable, but it doesn't make you bad. it makes you very good, in fact.”

"He could dance when he was alone, he could get emotional in his room with a book, but when the party started he disconnected, the others turned into a movie that he could watch but not participate in. So he acted like he was invisible, which wasn't hard when everyone was drunk. And he withdrew into his room, where he felt the purest kind of relief."

"Veste peças que fantasmas deixaram para trás e se torna, ela própria, um fantasma ainda maior, invisível aos passantes, que tropeçam ou pisam nela."

"Sometimes it feels like it has to be intentional. But it isn’t. It’s subconscious. It’s natural for people to forget or ignore Black girls. Effortless. And when they do pay attention, they don’t often have nice things to say."

"Não me sentia parte do povo de Deus, mas simplesmente o deixei falar."

"Se aprendi alguma coisa nessas últimas luas, foi que sou capaz de coisas grandiosas. Sei que posso ser melhor. Escolho ser melhor!"

"Eu senti meu coração batendo em lugares do corpo que nem faziam sentido."

"Our bodies belonged to us. Poor, disabled, it didn't matter. These were our bodies, and we had the right to decide what to do with them."

"É importante. Cuida da sua saúde mental, porque o resto do mundo obviamente não tá muito preocupado em como vai atacar seu emocional."