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Red at the Bone

Jacqueline Woodson

Top 10 Best Quotes

“Guess that's where the tears came from, knowing that there's so much in this great big world that you don't have a single ounce of control over. Guess the sooner you learn that, the sooner you'll have one less heartbreak in your life.”

“Does it sound crazy to say I looked at her and saw the world falling into some kind of order that I didn’t even know it was out of?”

“Some evenings I don't know where the old pains end and the new ones begin. Feels like the older you get the more they run into one long, deep aching.”

“Look how beautifully black we are. And as we dance, I am not Melody who is sixteen, I am not my parents’ once illegitimate daughter—I am a narrative, someone’s almost forgotten story. Remembered.”

“Something about memory. It takes you back to where you were and lets you just be there for a time.”

“Some people don't believe that you can meet a person and know that's the person for you for the rest of your life. I'm not going to try to argue with them on that. I know what I know.”

“Age will do that to you. Soon as something starts coming to your mind, it snatches it back. Makes you forget the stuff you want to remember. Brings back the memories you’re busy trying to forget.”

“. . . Love changes and changes. Then it changes again. . .”

“If this moment was a sentence, I’d be the period.”

“Every moment for all the generations was leading to you here on my lap, your head against your granddaddy’s chest, already four years old. Hair smelling like coconut oil. Something beneath that, though. Little-girl sweat—almost sour, but then just when I think that’s what it is, it turns, sweetens somehow. Makes me want to sit here forever breathing in your scalp. When did your arms get so long? Your feet so big? These footie pajamas with reindeer all over them remind me of the ones your mama used to wear. She used to fall asleep on my lap just like this. Back at the other house. Oh time time time time. Where’d you go where’d you go? My legs hurt tonight. Another place too—deep in my back somewhere, there’s a dull, aching pain. I try not to think about it. Old people used to always say, You only as old as you feel. Here I am closer to fifty than forty, but I feel older than that most days. Feel like the world is trying to pull me down back into it. Like God went ahead and said, I’ve changed my mind about you, Po’Boy. A bath with Epsom salts helps some evenings. Ginger tea keeps Sabe’s good cooking in my belly. Sitting here holding you at the end of the day—that’s . . . well, I’m not going to lie and say this isn’t the best thing that ever happened to my life because it is. Look at you laughing in your sleep. Got me wondering what you’re dreaming about. What’s making you laugh like that? Tell your granddaddy what’s playing in your pretty brown head, my little Melody. Name like a song. Like you were born and it was cause for the world to sing. You know how much your old granddaddy loves when you sing him silly songs? Sabe says she’s gonna have to get some earplugs if she has to hear one more verse of “Elmo’s World” or that song about how to grow a garden. But me, I can listen to your voice forever. Can’t hear you singing enough.”

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Book Keywords:

love, life, reality, pain, change, truths

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