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I could crawl into the spaces between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.
Other people’s sophistication tended to make me nervous and I stayed shy of Louise.
Courtesy cost nothing as long as one had dignity.
after all she was white, and as far as I knew, white women were
never lonely, except in books.
my room where solitude gaped whale-jawed wide to swallow me entire.
“If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don’t be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning ‘Good morning’ at total strangers.”)
There is a shock that comes so quickly and strikes so deep that the blow is internalized even before the skin feels it. The strike must first reach bone marrow, then ascend slowly to the brain where the slowpoke intellect records the deed.
My grandmother would have been proud of me. She had purred into my ears since babyhood, “Three things no person worth a hill of beans won’t do. One is eat in the street and another is cry in the street. And never let a stranger get your goat.” If they were going to lick their chops over my distress, they would find their tongues stuck to a cake of salt.
Vivian Baxter could and would deal with grand schemes and large plots, but please, pray God, spare her the details.
“Don’t run yourself down, darling, there are plenty of people in the world who will do that for you.”
Youthful cynicism is sad to observe, because it indicates not so much knowledge learned from bitter experiences as insufficient trust even to attempt the future.
A good woman put ironed sheets on the beds and matched the toilet paper to the color of the bathroom tile. I was unemployed but I had never worked so hard in all my life.
