Quotes from Lorene Cary

I'd been busy, busy, so busy, preparing for life, while life floated by me, quiet and swift as a regatta.

It didn't occur to me that I never named my own mystery illness the spring before (except to misdiagnose it to friends as mono), because I'd been afraid to admit, even to my mother, how much I'd wanted to lie down somewhere and hide. Black women, tall and strong as cypress trees, didn't pull that. Pain and shame and cowardice and fear had to be kept secret.

Happy sneaked out of the room and joined merriment down the hall.

I had not expected the gentle, tentative surge of gratitude I began to feel...for St. Paul's School, the spring, and the early morning. I needed the morning light and the warbling birds. I needed to find a way to live in this place for a moment and get the good of it. I had tried to hold myself apart, and the aloneness proved more terrible than what I had tried to escape.

How come you got to start making the bed the minute your feet hit the floor? You need to lighten up, girl. Live a little!' Then she'd laugh, delighted with herself and at my inability to be angry with her.

Veins raised themselves along the backs of my hands that summer. My handwriting changed several times. I began reading Time magazine. Soon after that it was time to go.