“You know, a heart can be broken, but it keeps on beating, just the same.”

“You never know what's in a person's heart until they're tested, do you?”

“I just know there's an albino living in the colored quarters. I can feel it in my bones.”

“One gal drank a can of floor wax and topped it off with a cup of Clorox, trying to separate herself from the same world he was in.”

“Grandma Harper has two green bottles shaped like women with black hair painted on their heads and a yellow glass colored captain's hat that she keeps her face powder in that I want too, and a picture of a naked girl in a swing, swinging way up in the air over castles in a blue sky.I don't know why I want those things, I just do.”

“I thought I was going to die right there on the spot. I've never heard anything so terrible in my whole life. I hope she is wrong and I never get a period. I am eleven years old and entirely too young to hear about it. Can you imagine my mother not knowing what Kotex are for and dusting the house with them? Well, her mother can just tell her what they are for. I'm not getting into the facts of life. I haven't heard one fact of life I like yet.”

“People cain't help being what they are any more than a skunk can help being a skunk. Don't you think if they had their choice they would rather be something else? Sure they would. People are just weak.”