“Their silence comfortable. Something unfolding. But what? Not love, which wrenched and wounded. Not love, which came only once.”

“I believe that this nation can only heal from the wounds of racism if we all begin to love blackness. And by that I don't mean that we love only that which is best within us, but that we're also able to love that which is faltering, which is wounded, which is contradictory, incomplete.”

“once I falsely hoped to meet the beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding.”

“God decreed that the love which came to Cosette was a love that saves.”

“I fell in love once, if love be that cruelty which takes us straight to the gates of Paradise only to remind us they are closed for ever.”

“I am sorry I ran from you. I am still running, running from that knowledge, that eye, that love from which there is no refuge. For you meant only love, and love, and I felt only fear, and pain. So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid.”