“Thing about white people," Jeremiah's father tells him, "they know what everybody else is, but they don't know they're white" - "Maybe some know it" His father eyed him and smiled "When they walk into a party and everyone's black, they know it. Or when they get caught in Harlem after nightfall, they know it. But otherwise...”

“Racism doesn't know color, death doesn't know age, and pain doesn't know might.”

“I don't know," he said softly. "I look into the future and I don't see anything else. It's like it's this big blank space where I should be.”

“What did it sound like...having someone call your name across a crowded school yard? How did it feel to turn to the sound of your name, to see some smiling face or waving hand and know it was for you and you alone?" —Staggerlee”

“Mama was always saying I was a brain snob, that I didn't like people who didn't think. I didn't know if that was snobby. Who wanted to walk around explaining everything to people all the time?”

“In our yearbook, there is a picture of me and Miah - sitting in Central Park - Miah has his lips poked out and is about to kiss me on my cheek. And I'm looking straight into the camera laughing. Two and half years have passed, and still, this is how I remember us. This is how I will always remember us. And I know when I look at that picture, when I think back to those few months with Miah, that I did not miss the moment.”

“And sometimes,' Anne said softly, 'there's just plain love, Ellie. no reason for it, no need to explain'Then she leaned back on the couch, crossed her ankle over her knee and grinned. 'Perfect love,' she said. 'And what's that like?''When you find it, lil sis. You'll know.”