Skin & Bones Quotes

“There are Black people everywhere, and everywhere we are, we know how to create community. Somehow, someway, without meeting each other, living in different regions, speaking different languages, there is a knowing, a way of being that we all relate to. We are not a monolith, yet even in our individuality, we are one.”
― Renée Watson, skin & bones: a novel

“Believe that it’s not your responsibility to make anyone see your worth. You just be every bit of brilliance and beauty you are. Just because they don’t believe you, don’t mean it’s not true.”
― Renée Watson, skin & bones: a novel

“I just—I didn’t start feeling the need to change myself or think of myself as less than until I met a world that told me that who I was and how I looked was not good enough.”
― Renée Watson, skin & bones: a novel

“I have often been told I am too much. Too loud, too sassy, too dark, too big. Too Black. And so even in loving you, I find myself overthinking and adjusting. Shape-shifting to be what you need me to be. Or what I think you need. When I first knew I loved you, I was afraid to say it. Didn’t want to come on too strong. Didn’t want to be too much.”
― Renée Watson, skin & bones: a novel

“Life’s traumas and sagas and hurts and offenses and accomplishments and jubilees don’t wait their turn. All in the same parade they come marching.”
― Renée Watson, skin & bones: a novel

“I am the harvest of my ancestors.”
― Renée Watson, skin & bones: a novel

“understand that. Want older boys not to look at her with wanton gazes, want White teachers to hear the tenor of her voice and not mistake it for attitude or sass, want her curiosity to be seen as innocent as it is. Want her purity protected. Want her girlhood preserved.”
― Renée Watson, skin & bones: a novel

“Don’t marry the man you can’t live without. Marry the man you can live with.”
― Renée Watson, skin & bones: a novel

“None of us survive childhood unscathed. When Aaliyah looks back on these days, yes, she might remember these painful moments, but I believe she’ll remember all the days you showed up for her, that you kept loving her, that you kept on persevering for her—for yourself. The best way you knew how. If you believe you’re passing down your shortcomings and burdens to her, doesn’t that mean she’s inheriting the best parts of you too? She’ll have to decide what to let go of, what to keep.”
― Renée Watson, skin & bones: a novel

“She called Malcolm Daddy and Paige told her, He’s not your real daddy, emphasis on real. Aaliyah said, He’s going to marry my momma one day, so soon he will be my real daddy. But anyway, his love for me is real, like a daddy’s love should be, so that’s why I call him Daddy now. I don’t have to wait till the wedding.”
― Renée Watson, skin & bones: a novel

“I know all about life having unpredictable, heartbreaking, and thrilling moments. But still, I feel unprepared for this life I am living. No one prepares you for loss and fear of loss, no one tells you how to hold sorrow while juggling accomplishments and dreams and worries and memories and what-ifs and maybes and guilt and hope and pride and motherhood and singleness and independence and faith and doubt all at once. Make it look like a practiced juggling act.”
― Renée Watson, skin & bones: a novel