“No matter what you do, someone always knew you would.”

“What do you want? Love. Well, love gets what she wants one way or another.”

“Miss B. says, "It's a mama's faith what keeps her children right. I'm not talkin' 'bout the churchgoin' kind, neither. Miss Mabel's got faith in goodness. Tell me you can't help but believe in it too just by lookin' at her.”

“Aunt Fran lowered her voice. "Her cold is just the start of a greater sickness. These 'stories,' as you call them, will only lead her to more pain.""Fran, talk plain, will you?""I'm talking about derangement.""Don't be silly!"She wispered. "And deviant behaviours.”

“The house seemed almost without smells at all, pleasant or foul, leaving me to wonder if the upper class existed on a different sort of air from the rest of the world, a breeze piped into their homes from above the clouds, so clean you had to pay for it.”

“Standing in front of the girl's house, Mama yelled up at the windows, "Katie Adams, you whore, give me my husband back!" When Miss Adams' neighbours complained about all the noise Mama was making, my father came down to quiet her. He kissed her until she cried, but didn't come home.”

“If women lose the right to say where and how they birth their children, then they will have lost something that's as dear to life as breathing.”