Home > Author > Martha Southgate
1 " In Tulsa, a girl would no sooner have run around with unstraightened hair than she would have run around naked. It would have been worse than running around naked, letting everyone see your naps (40). "
― Martha Southgate , Third Girl from the Left
2 " I was raised to respect books - the house was full of them. From the time I was little, it was drummed into our heads that books were almost the most important thing in the world, second only to getting a good education. "
― Martha Southgate , The Taste of Salt
3 " You see that beauty as it finally is even though no one wants to see it as it is in a black woman in America, not a hoochie, not a ho, not a mammy, not a dyke, not a cliché, just a woman. A lot of women. Real women doing what they can, making art where they can, making their lives mean something where they can. "
4 " ...[white boys] were so sure, so unbelievably sure that the way they understood the world was the way the world was. "
5 " She had this way of just disappearing. He saw in whenever he asked her to do something she didn't wan to answer or asked her to do something she didn't want to do, like meeting his mother or father. She'd close her mouth, that she'd stuff her hands in the front pockets of her jeans and she'd turn into a wall. Colin never understood what she was running from. But he ran after her. He'd never met a woman who knew more about film. After he was with her for a while, though, he didn't care about that so much. He loved her mind; she was always making connections that startle and pleased him. He loved to stand behind her in movie lines and breathe her in, the softly sweaty odor of her. HE loved to make her laugh. He always felt as though he'd won a prize when he succeeded. He loved he. But he didn't tell her for the longest time. He though she might run away for good after that. "
6 " Why wouldn't you want to be as close as you could to another person's glow, when you felt it? I still think that, to tell the truth. It makes being married hard. "
7 " How could I lose sight of him so easily? He was such a dear, good man. What could I have been thinking? I go up to get dressed for work and stopped to kiss him like I meant it, another thing that I don't do enough. He slapped my butt as I left the kitchen to get ready for the day. I sang off-key in the shower. "
8 " How could I lose sight of him so easily? He was such a dear, good man. What could I have been thinking? I got up to get dressed for work and stopped to kiss him like I meant it, another thing that I don't do enough. He slapped my butt as I left the kitchen to get ready for the day. I sang off-key in the shower. "
9 " That was the funny thing about my feelings for Ben - in most ways, they had nothing to do with Daniel. My feelings for them seemed like two entirely separate but necessary chambers of my heart. "
10 " I could feel him paying attention to me with every inch of his being. He wanted to know me. My skin tightened with the pleasure of it. So I answered. "