“To close read is to linger, to dally, to take pleasure in tarrying, and to hold out that these activities can allow us to look both hard and askance at the norm.”

“Any time while I was a slave, if one minute's freedom had been offered to me, and I had been told that I must die at the end of that minute, I would have taken it just to stand one minute on God's earth a free woman.”

“Destiny isn’t meant to allow us to be lazy.”

“You can do hard things.”

“There is no activity that is somehow more Christian than another. God looks at the heart, and that is the good part that Mary knew. he simply asks us to come as we are and to be willing, open to receive whatever he might have for us this day. That is what it means to live a graceful life.”

“Some girls look to fill the emptiness with their rebellious ways and get into trouble. Other girls try hard to fill the emptiness with good things and get praise. But both girls are reaching for something we'll never find outside of God.”

“To give us room to explore the varieties of mind and body into which our genome can evolve, one planet is not enough.”