“We all have our la-la-la song. The thing we do when the world isn't singing a nice tune to us. We sing our own nice tune to drown out ugly.”
― Rita Williams-Garcia, quote from One Crazy Summer
“It was a strange, wonderful feeling. To discover eyes upon you when you expected no one to notice you at all.”
― Rita Williams-Garcia, quote from One Crazy Summer
“A name is important. It isn't something you drop in the litter basket or on the ground. Your name is now people know you. The very mention of your name makes a picture spring to mind, whether it's a picture of clashing fists or a mighty mountain that can't be knocked down. Your name is who you are and how you're known even when you do something great or something dumb.”
― Rita Williams-Garcia, quote from One Crazy Summer
“Saying "please" without saying it to someone you don't want to say "please" to in the first place tops the list of hard.”
― Rita Williams-Garcia, quote from One Crazy Summer
“I just took the box and nodded, because that's how you treat crazy people. You nod and count down twenty-seven days for crazy to come to an end.”
― Rita Williams-Garcia, quote from One Crazy Summer
“Cecile made it sound like it was no big deal. "I've been fighting for freedom all my life." But she wasn't talking about protest signs, standing up to the Man, and knowing your rights. She was talking about her life. Just her. Not the people.”
― Rita Williams-Garcia, quote from One Crazy Summer
“If you knew what I knew, seen what I've seen, you wouldn't be so quick to pull the plow.”
― Rita Williams-Garcia, quote from One Crazy Summer
“That was how I knew Sister Mukumbo was a real teacher, aside from her welcoming smile and her blackboard penmanship. She asked a teacher's type of question. The kind that says: Join in.”
― Rita Williams-Garcia, quote from One Crazy Summer
“I had a lot of those memories clicking before me like projector slides in the dark. Lots of pictures, smells and sounds flashing in and out.”
― Rita Williams-Garcia, quote from One Crazy Summer
“The last thing Pa and Big Ma wanted to hear was how we made a grand Negro spectacle of ourselves thirty thousand feet up in the air around all these white people.”
― Rita Williams-Garcia, quote from One Crazy Summer
“Cecile carried on a full conversation, on and on”
― Rita Williams-Garcia, quote from One Crazy Summer
“We're trying to break yokes. You're trying to make one for yourself.”
― Rita Williams-Garcia, quote from One Crazy Summer
“There was also one Anthony, whose mama could spell, and one Antnee, whose mama couldn’t. It”
― Rita Williams-Garcia, quote from One Crazy Summer
“Although I didn’t hear the door swing”
― Rita Williams-Garcia, quote from One Crazy Summer
“I didn’t want to say Big Ma was right. Cecile was no kind of mother. Cecile didn’t want us. Cecile was crazy. I didn’t have to.”
― Rita Williams-Garcia, quote from One Crazy Summer
Rita Williams-Garcia
Born place: in Queens, N.Y,, The United States
Born date April 13, 1957
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“I always lose the guy!”
“Yeah, well that’s because they’re always the wrong guy.”
“And you think you’re the right one?”
“Yeah. I do. I’m the one,” he says, pointing to his chest.
…
“I've been here for you all along. I've listened to you cry about other guys, I rescue you, take care of you when you're sick, hug you when you're sad, tell you you're beautiful when you look terrible.” He looks me straight in the eyes and is dead serious when he says, “Princess, I've always been the one”
― Jillian Dodd, quote from That Boy
“You suck,” I mumbled.
“No, Baby, you suck, and you do it very fucking well.”
― Amelia Hutchins, quote from Taunting Destiny
“And yeah, it got better. My stomach eventually went back to normal. I didn’t cry every day. But my heart. My heart will always be broken.”
― Susane Colasanti, quote from Take Me There
“Tomorrow his friends would gather at Josie's for coffee and doughnuts, and in his absence they would talk of [her] in the same way they had talked of that postal worker in the gorilla suit or the fellow who killed all those children. They would not do so maliciously, but because they had thought her curious and now found her death somehow threatening. After all, she had died here, in Hopewell––not in some other town in some other state. She had died here, where they lived, and she was someone they knew. Yes, she was odd, and it wasn't really any surprise that she had died of a heart attack blasting away at shadows with a shotgun, because [she] had done stranger things. But in the back of their minds was the conviction that she really wasn't so different than they were, and that if it could happen to her, it could happen to them. Truth was, you shared an uneasy sense of kinship with even the most unfortunate, disaffected souls; you felt you had known at least a few of them during your life. You had been children together, with children's hopes and dreams. The dark future that had claimed those few was never more than an arm's length away from everyone else. You knew that. You knew that a single misfortune could change your life forever, that you were vulnerable, and to protect yourself you wanted to know everything you could about why it had touched another and passed you by.
”
― Terry Brooks, quote from Running with the Demon
“You went through hell and lived. That leaves marks”
― Simon Holt, quote from Soulstice
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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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