“Ms. Casey is standing in front of the class explaining how she worked all weekend to get the tests graded so she could hand them back on Monday morning, and you're wondering if you're supposed to be impressed that she did her job.”

“Whatever task you're set, find some way to love it. Sunny wondered if Josiah's words applied to standing with a face of stone so the person in front of her wouldn't know how much she wanted to scream.”

“Tell it to the cleaning lady on Monday. Because you'll be dust on Monday. Because I'll be pulverizing you sometime over the weekend. And the cleaning lady... cleans up... dust. She dusts. And she has weekends off, so... Monday. Right?”

“It's the way it works," she said in clipped tones. "For one rise, another must fall." "But why? Why can't we just rise, and everybody else can stay where they are? I wouldn't care!" "And you think I would?" Keisha demanded. She glared at me, the visibly pulled herself back. When she exhaled, her nostrils flared. "Say you've taken a math test. Or an English test, since you love books so much. And you get a hundred. You're psyched, right? 'Mom, I got a hundred! I got the highest grade in the class!'" She raised her eyebrows. "But say everybody else gets a hundred, too. Are you still as proud?" "Of course," I said stubbornly. "I'd still have my A." "Bullshit. You like your As because other people get Cs. Because that means you're smarted than they are. Better than they are." "I don't think I'm better than anyone." "Then you're and idiot.”

“Fifty years," I hackneyed, "is a long time.""Not when you're looking back at them," she said. "You wonder how they vanished so quickly.”

“Fuck, she was so sick of herself-herself and her fucking emotional retardation. How did people do this shit all the time, this wanting people, caring about them? How did they stand it, how did they ever get anything done? She was sick of being lost.”