“You ain’t got no advantages when you’re small and contrary.”“I ain’t puny,” I said hotly. “And I ain’t contrary.”

“The word 'impossible' ain’t in my dictionary.”

“I wish I’d paid better attention. I didn’t yet think of time as finite. I didn’t fully appreciate the stories she told me until I became adult, and by then I had to make do with snippets pasted together, a film projected on the back of my mind.”

“I still loved Granny. It flowed out of my chest. With Granny gone, where would my love go?”

“Now that her spirit had left, I’d thought she would feel light. Then I realized it was the spirit that carries the weight of the body and not the other way around.”

“Granny always said finding justice was as tough as putting socks on a rooster.”

“The guilty pleasure defense. In my view if it’s guilty, it ain’t pleasure.”