I have encountered riotous mobs and have been hung in effigy, but my motto is: Men's rights are nothing more. Women's rights are nothing less.

No man is good enough to govern any woman without her consent.

Here, in this very first paragraph of the Declaration, is the assertion of the natural right of all to the ballot; for how can 'the consent of the governed' be given if the right to vote be denied?

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.

Into every life a little rain must fall.

Every living creature on the earth is special. You want to be the one that puts an end to one of them?

There's a frightful muteness that dwells at the center of all unspeakable things, and I had found my way into it.

I didn't know how to be in the world without her.

Where had I been that I didn't know about imaginary friends? I could see the point of it. How a lost part of yourself steps out and remind you who you could be with a little work.

There is a fullness of time for things. You have to know when to prod and when to be quiet. When to let things take their course.

Shitbucket, hellfire, damnation, and son of a mother bitch," said Rosaleen, laying into each word like it was sweet potatoes on her tongue.

From now on when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I planned to say, Amnesiac.

It takes a bee 10,000,000 trips to collect enough nectar to make 1 pound of honey.

Everybody needs a seashell in her bathroom to remind her the ocean is her home.

I worried so much about how I looked and whether I was doing things right, I felt half the time I was impersonating a girl instead of really being one.

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

I wondered what it was like to be inside her, just a curl of flesh swimming in the darkness, the quiet things that had passed between us.

You don't have to place your hand on Mary's heart to get strength and consolation and rescue, and all the other things we need to get through life. You can place it right here on your own heart. Your own heart.

Standing there, I loved myself and I hated myself. That's what the black Mary did to me, made me feel my glory and my shame at the same time.

When a woman starts to disentangle herself from patriarchy, ultimately she is abandoned to her own self.

I’d chosen the regret I could live with best, that’s all.

For a moment I felt the quiet hungering thing that comes inside when you return to the place of your origins, and then the ache of mis-belonging.

The redness had seeped from the day and night was arranging herself around us. Cooling things down, staining and dyeing the evening purple and blue black.