“The point is not knowing another person, or learning to love another person. The point is simply this: how tender can we bear to be?”

“Do you think any of us know how to love?! Do you think anybody would ever do anything if they waited until they knew how to love?! Do you think that babies would ever get made or meals cooked or crops planed or books written or what God-damn-have-you? Do you think people would even get out of bed in the morning if they waited until they knew how to love? You have had too much therapy. Or not enough. God knows how to love, kiddo. The rest of us are only good actors.Forget love. Try good manners.”

“This is a cardinal Ya-Ya rule: you must meet each person's eyes while clinking glasses in a toast. Otherwise, the ritual has no meaning, it's just pure show. And that is something the Ya-Yas are not.”

“There is the truth of history, and there is the truth of what a person remembers. As {she} sat at the edge of {the lake}, memory blossoms floated unbounded, as though breathed, no words spoken. Like birds that fly across national borders, between countries at war at each other.”

“She walks barefoot into the humid night, moonlight on her freckled shoulders. Near a huge, live oak tree on the edge of her father's cotton fields, Sidda looks up into the sky. In the crook of the crescent moon sits the Holy Lady, with strong muscles and a merciful heart. She kicks her splendid legs like the moon is her swing and the sky, her front porch. She waves down at Sidda like she has just spotted an old buddy.Sidda stands in the moonlight and lets the Blessed Mother love every hair on her six-year-old head. Tenderness flows down from the moon and up from the earth. For one fleeting, luminous moment, Sidda Walker knows there has never been a time when she has not been loved.”

“…the love we most cherish will, of necessity, bring us pain. Because that love is like the setting of a body with broken bones. But I want to stage the setting. I want to direct all scenes.”

“The words shot through Vivi's bones and blood and muscle, and her body relaxed, so that when her feet touched the ground they met the earth differently, as though they had found roots that reached deep down and anchored to something tender and undamaged.”