“There is no thing that with a twist of the imagination cannot be something else. Porpoises risen in a green sea, the wind at nightfall bending the rose- red grasses and you- in your apron hurrying to catch- say it seems to you to be your son. How ridiculous! You will pass up into a cloud and look back at me, not count the scribbling foolish that put wings at your heels, at your knees.”

“Hair so red, as red as flame, and eyes so green, as deep as the sea,your skin so pale I cannot tame -I burn and I drown when you come to me.”

“When you die, you’ll be wearing your white dress with red roses, and your hair will be long and falling around your shoulders. When they shoot you, up on your damn roof or walking alone on the street, your blood will look like another red rose on your dress, and no one will notice, not even you when you bleed out for Mother Russia.”

“They'll be days like this" my momma said.When you open your hands to catch, and wind up with only blisters and bruises.When you try to step out of the phone booth and try to fly , and the very people you want to save, are the ones standing on your cape.When your boots will fill with rain, and you'll be up to your knees with disappointmentAnd those are the very days you have all the more reason to say "Thank you".”

“I say, if your knees aren’t green by the end of the day, you ought to seriously re-examine your life.”

“If I could go back, I'd coach myself. I'd be the woman who taught me how to stand up, how to want things, how to ask for them. I'd be the woman who says, your mind, your imagination, they are everything. Look how beautiful. You deserve to sit at the table. The radiance falls on all of us.”