Quotes By Author: uzodinma iweala

“I’m still me, I want to say to him, your son, but that would hardly help if I am currently everything wrong with the world.”

“See over there, I can be me, he says. I smile but it makes me sad. I haven’t found any safe spaces. Damien says, you’re safe with me. Until I’m not. He raises an eyebrow. With you I mean, I add. I dream about an internship on the West Coast, but there is nothing for me to do. I am not the president’s daughter. I’ve never met a movie star. I barely watch television.”

“There is no one to laugh with about his cookies and milk, to gush about the fact that he is eighteen like I am eighteen only he seems much older.”

“OJ says our father lives somewhere between the self-satisfaction that his success has made us soft and disgust that we are unacquainted with the brutal intensity of a world that he has effectively tamed for us.”

“The days since then have been a timeless fuzz. I feel time pass but nothing actually seems to happen.”

“Meredith has held faith for the last five months that Harvard will have faith in her– even after the initial early deferral. They have to. She is smart and her parents are important.”

“You cannot unsee what has been seen once the veil is lifted, Reverend Olumide says in church. We cannot return to the garden of Eden. When I meet with him he says I need to confront my fears, that the devil torments us with that which scares us most. So, I cross the line between the blue hallways tiles and the white locker-room floor and navigate my way to locker umber thirty-two.”

“You cannot unsee what has been seen once the veil is lifted, Reverend Olumide says in church. We cannot return to the garden of Eden. When I meet with him he says I need to confront my fears, that the devil torments us with that which scares us most. So, I cross the line between the blue hallways tiles and the white locker-room floor and navigate my way to locker number thirty-two.”