Martha Southgate Quotes

She had this way of just disappearing. He saw in whenever he asked her to do something she didn't wan to answer or asked her to do something she didn't want to do, like meeting his mother or father. She'd close her mouth, that she'd stuff her hands in the front pockets of her jeans and she'd turn into a wall. Colin never understood what she was running from. But he ran after her. He'd never met a woman who knew more about film. After he was with her for a while, though, he didn't care about that so much. He loved her mind; she was always making connections that startle and pleased him. He loved to stand behind her in movie lines and breathe her in, the softly sweaty odor of her. HE loved to make her laugh. He always felt as though he'd won a prize when he succeeded. He loved he. But he didn't tell her for the longest time. He though she might run away for good after that.

[white boys] were so sure, so unbelievably sure that the way they understood the world was the way the world was.

In Tulsa, a girl would no sooner have run around with unstraightened hair than she would have run around naked. It would have been worse than running around naked, letting everyone see your naps (40).

I was raised to respect books - the house was full of them. From the time I was little, it was drummed into our heads that books were almost the most important thing in the world, second only to getting a good education.