Grace Quotes

“It’s been said that justice is getting what you deserve. And mercy is not getting the bad you deserve. Grace is getting a good thing, even when you don’t deserve it.”
― Natashia Deón, Grace

“It ain’t fair they tell women to wear something like a baggie sleeve from neck to ankle even in a heat wave. The religious ones tell her it’s what God wants. To honor her body. When really it’s to make women servants to those men’s sin because they cain’t see women the way God intended—not everybody’s a possible lover—sisters and brothers, maybe. But those men blame her instead of asking God to cleanse and fix them. Around women, those men are always halfway in hell. Double-minded.”
― Natashia Deón, Grace

“want to decide my own value. I don’t want a price tag no more. A slave or a woman. Valued twice. First as a woman and again as not white. I’m priceless. No matter what’s been done to my body, by me or somebody else. I want to make my own rules . . . if I wanted. If I was sure.”
― Natashia Deón, Grace

“I say, "Not every woman got the same strong."

"What'd you say?"

"Your momma had the strong to give birth to you, to raise you, to put the strength inside you to do something she never could. Maybe she couldn't be your strong. In the end, you saved yourself.”
― Natashia Deón, Grace

“But there are some stories that mothers never tell their daughters - secret stories. Stories that would prove a mother was once young, done thangs with men she could never tell, in ways she could never tell, and places she should never. Private stories where love, any 'semblance of love, would lead a person like me to the place I was that night in 1848. When I died.”
― Natashia Deón, Grace

“where somebody comes from only matters to people who come from something and as it was, she came from me.”
― Natashia Deón, Grace

“Hazel say pain’s got a way of etching memories into people’s minds, even a child’s, and holds its place there for a lifetime.”
― Natashia Deón, Grace

“There are things that happened to me when I was alive that I didn't know happened 'til I was dead. So I cain't place myself there now and lie about it, 'cause it didn't happen that way.

I wasn't there to know. Didn't see it. Didn't hear it.

It's the same thing that's happening to you.

Other people will make choices for you, about you - win or lose, work or won't, live or die - and you'll have missed it.

Choices that could change the rest of your life and you won't even know it happened 'til you're dead. 'Til you get your turn with the flashes.

And once you've been in 'em long enough, you'll get to see everything.”
― Natashia Deón, Grace

“I don't know what's worse: living in fear or dying. Before two weeks ago when George met Rachel, I would've said fear and only dying if the dying didn't last long. But now, I just say death.

I've been waiting and watching over Squiggy and Rachel, hoping for George to redeem hisself for better 'cause I have no choice. If Bessie's consequence is true, I cain't in square in my mind not being here to see my grandchildren grow. To see Josey, a mother like me, grow. I can't end myself after all we been through. They need me. Even this way. 'Cause sometimes, just being there for somebody, wordless and present, is enough.”
― Natashia Deón, Grace

“And this girl, this boy, Josey would name in freedom. So the last name she chose was not Graham who'd owned her. Owned Sissy. It was Freeman.”
― Natashia Deón, Grace

“I want to decide my own value. I don't want a price tag no more. A slave or a woman. Valued twice. First as a woman and again as non-white.”
― Natashia Deón, Grace

“Throughout this plantation field, folks got sheets knotted on the ends of sticks or thrown over their shoulders like satchels. Inside 'em are needed things - food, clothes, skins of water, and a few tokens, reminders that they are the only survivors of slavery. That said, more than one man's got nothin; ain't taking nothin, don't want nothin, they got all they need - their lives and their freedom.”
― Natashia Deón, Grace

“Life cain't be taken for granted. 'Cause in the end it'll leave you with the worst kind of wanting. Like being desperate for something that came and went an hour ago.”
― Natashia Deón, Grace

“Where do we start when we tell the stories of our loved ones? On the day they were born or the day they mattered?

Mattered to other people, I mean, did something worth talking about. I guess I could start with who begot who like the Bible do, but where somebody comes from only matters to people who come from something and as it was, she came from me.”
― Natashia Deón, Grace

“I guess the most important parts of life ain't measured by years or days or minutes but by moments. Moments that come in flashes here, only some of 'em good like seeing my sister, Hazel, again. I was seven years old in one of them flashes. Twelve in another. My favorite was the time when Hazel was teaching me how to tumble. And in another, I was six years old and she helped me lose my first tooth with a string and a slammed door.

The hell is the bad memories. Going back again and again and not being able to make a damn bit of difference. But God had mercy on me.

It's been said that justice is getting what you deserve. And mercy is not getting the bad you deserve. Grace is getting a good thing, even when you don't deserve it. So if I would've named my good thing, I'd have called her Grace. But someone else named her Josephine.”
― Natashia Deón, Grace

“Hazel say pain's got a way of etching memories into people's minds, even a child's, and holds its place there for a lifetime. That's why she remembers. She say her memories keep her guilty, blame her for not doing the thangs that only grown folks woulda known to do. She say she's aged into her bad memories, helpless as the day she got 'em 'cause she still cain't go inside 'em and fie nothin.”
― Natashia Deón, Grace

“It was the first time a man lied for me. It was the familiar ring of lifesaving untruth. A death rattle that has followed me all my life. And it was the sound that plunged me into the flashes.”
― Natashia Deón, Grace

“Mama Dean once told me, “We’re all like this spinning cotton. A God-made thang. Blended together the pieces are strong. Apart, the wind gets them, blows them away, makes them dirty before they have a chance to make something beautiful.” I reckon I’m like that cotton, blown-away dirty.”
― Natashia Deón, Grace

“Hazel say pain’s got a way of etching memories into people’s minds, even a child’s, and holds its place there for a lifetime. That”
― Natashia Deón, Grace