“We know Pilots don’t make anybody smarter. They don’t teach good study skills. They aren’t a replacement for teachers or books. If a kid is in tenth grade and reading on a third-grade level, he’s not going to magically start comprehending quantum physics or To the Lighthouse just because he has a Pilot . It’s a superficial fix. A bandage for a paper cut on a finger when there’s a sucking chest wound, too.”

“How can you lose an entire person, only to gain a part of them back in someone entirely new?”

"When I paint, there’s always a moment where I just know that I’m finally finished. The colors and textures come together to depict a feeling of rightness. Us here is that rightness.”

🦋🦋🦋🦋 (four stars as rated in a butterfly pendant on a little gold chain)

“I can’t help it. I succumb to the spell of Jamaica as the fantasy of who my father is radiates in front of me. My heart instantly wraps around him, and I forget every time he has broken it.”

"When they ask how I weathered the storm, I will tell them I did not. I was uprooted like the palm trees and shot down like the birds from the stormy skies. I was ravished like the zinc houses and devoured like the soil as it swallowed itself whole. I was ruined. I was disaster. I was dancing in the eye of God’s will. “Thank you,” I whisper as we ascend into the sky. How beautiful it was to be destroyed.”

🦩🦩🦩🦩(four stars as rated in flamingos because.... um... flamingos?)

“They had asked themselves questions when they decided to have children — do we have the money, do we have the space, do we have what it takes — but they didn’t ask what the world would be when their children grew.”

🎀🎀🎀🎀🎀 (five stars as rated in red ribbons trailing along behind your friend each time she visits)

“Please,” she said from her corner, “do not blame us for how our lives have turned out. Perhaps it’s not just the women in our family anyhow—our entire people have been telling the wrong stories, making a wretched mess of our history. As if anybody wants to be told that their ability to endure is their greatest virtue. No wonder we get invasions and occupations, war and asshole husbands. What kind of stories, I wonder, do the white countries tell of themselves?”

💔💔💔💔 (four stars as rated in hearts so broken because THAT ENDING 😭)

“Knowledge is power, and the world is set against you knowing anything, so when someone’s trying to teach you something, pay attention.”

“Promise me you’ll be careful. I know you already are, just”—she lifted her hand from Alice’s knee, made a fist, then forced her fingers loose to pat her knee again, squeezing—“even when you’re careful, even when you play by the rules, it might not be enough. Gotta go the extra mile out here.”

“Who are you writing for again?" Mr. Lee asks, arching a brow. He asked me this before. I know the answer he wants to hear. I write for myself. I'm not sure what this really means, though. I can't help caring about what people think, especially about my writing. "We have too many voices inside our heads. You have to pick out the ones that mean something to you. What story do you want to tell?”