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If You Come Softly QUOTES

If You Come Softly QUOTES

1 " Once I asked Miah if he ever forgot he was black. No. I never forget, he said. But sometimes it doesn’t matter-like I just am. Then he asked me if I ever forgot I was white. Sometimes, I said. And when you’re forgetting, what color are you? No color. Then Miah looked away from me and said, We’re different that way. "

― Jacqueline Woodson , If You Come Softly

2 " Time comes to us softly, slowly. It sits beside us for a while. Then, long before we are ready, it moves on. "

― Jacqueline Woodson , If You Come Softly

3 " I think only once in your life do you find someone that you say, "Hey, this is the person I want to spend the rest of my time on this earth with." And if you miss it, or walk away from it, or even maybe, blink - it's gone. "

― Jacqueline Woodson , If You Come Softly

4 " He loved October. Had always loved it. There was something sad and beautiful about it - the ending and beginning of things. "

― Jacqueline Woodson , If You Come Softly

5 " This is how the time moves - an hour here, a day somewhere, and then it's night and then it's morning. A clock ticking on a shelf. A small child running to school, a father coming home.

Time moves over us and past us, and the feeling of lips pressed against lips fades into memory. A picture yellows at its edges. A phone rings in an empty room. "

― Jacqueline Woodson , If You Come Softly

6 " He wondered where that stuff went to, where love went to, how a person could just love somebody one day and boom –- the next day love somebody else. "

― Jacqueline Woodson , If You Come Softly

7 " If you come as softly
as the wind within the trees.
You may hear what I hear.
See what sorrow sees.
If you come as lightly
as threading dew,
I will take you gladly,
nor ask more of you. "

― Jacqueline Woodson , If You Come Softly

8 " Fifteen. Sixteen was probably something, but fifteen - fifteen was a place between here and nowhere. "

― Jacqueline Woodson , If You Come Softly

9 " I don't know," he said softly. "I look into the future and I don't see anything else. It's like it's this big blank space where I should be. "

― Jacqueline Woodson , If You Come Softly

10 " Thing about white people," Jeremiah's father tells him, "they know what everybody else is, but they don't know they're white" - "Maybe some know it" His father eyed him and smiled "When they walk into a party and everyone's black, they know it. Or when they get caught in Harlem after nightfall, they know it. But otherwise... "

― Jacqueline Woodson , If You Come Softly

11 " I'm gonna kiss you in each room," he said. "Then it's dinnertime."

"How many rooms to this place?" Ellie asked, her eyes wide.

Miah shrugged. "I'm not counting. "

― Jacqueline Woodson , If You Come Softly

12 " In our yearbook, there is a picture of me and Miah - sitting in Central Park - Miah has his lips poked out and is about to kiss me on my cheek. And I'm looking straight into the camera laughing. Two and half years have passed, and still, this is how I remember us. This is how I will always remember us. And I know when I look at that picture, when I think back to those few months with Miah, that I did not miss the moment. "

― Jacqueline Woodson , If You Come Softly

13 " I would never trust her. Not one hundred percent. Not the way some people can trust their mothers. "

― Jacqueline Woodson , If You Come Softly

14 " Chapter 1 JEREMIAH WAS BLACK. HE COULD FEEL IT. THE WAY THE sun pressed down hard and hot on his skin in the summer. Sometimes it felt like he sweated black beads of oil. He felt warm inside his skin, protected. And in Fort Greene, Brooklyn—where everyone seemed to be some shade of black-he felt good walking through the neighborhood. But one step outside. Just one step and somehow the weight of his skin seemed to change. It got heavier. Light-skinned "

― Jacqueline Woodson , If You Come Softly

15 " And sometimes,' Anne said softly, 'there's just plain love, Ellie. no reason for it, no need to explain'
Then she leaned back on the couch, crossed her ankle over her knee and grinned. 'Perfect love,' she said.
'And what's that like?'
'When you find it, lil sis. You'll know. "

― Jacqueline Woodson , If You Come Softly

16 " THING ABOUT WHITE PEOPLE,” HIS FATHER WAS SAYING. They were driving along the Long Island Ex pressway, heading out to East Hampton. There was a house there his father wanted to look at for his next film. “They don’t know they’re white. They know what everybody else is, but they don’t know they’re white.” He shook his head and checked his rearview mirror. “It’s strange. "

― Jacqueline Woodson , If You Come Softly

17 " Every since he was a little boy, his father had always warned him about running in white neighborhoods. Once, when he was about ten, he had torn away from his father and taken off down Madison Avenue. When his father caught up to him, he grabbed Miah’s shoulder. Don’t you ever run in a white neighborhood, he’d whispered fiercely, tears in his eyes. Then he had pulled Miah toward him and held him. Ever. "

― Jacqueline Woodson , If You Come Softly

18 " When you have so much real drama in your life, it’s hard to think about fiction. "

― Jacqueline Woodson , If You Come Softly

19 " When I used to dream about that somebody they never had a face. It was more like a feeling. "

― Jacqueline Woodson , If You Come Softly

20 " Let’s say it’s rain--the people who got problems with us being together--let’s call them and their problems rain.”

Ellie nodded. “Okay, they’re rain.” She smiled. “So now what?”

“So it’s not always raining, is it? But when it’s not raining, we know the rain isn’t gone forever. "

― Jacqueline Woodson , If You Come Softly