Quotes from Ami McKay

When do I get to say whatever I wish?" "When it pains you not to," her mother had replied. "What if I'm too scared?" "All the more reason to speak your mind.

All you need to know about men is this - they have a great need to put their cock into whatever hole they find.

Kissin' the dirt's the only way you'll see heaven.

Each morning you set your sights on the tasks ahead and hope that when the day is done you're farther along than when you started.

The wall between the men's and women's rooms was built like a fortress, and solid bars covered the windows—they'd been put there by the proprietors to protect the girls' honour. Instead they'd served as a death sentence. Isn't that always the way, Mrs. Fisher had thought, man's fears causing him to do things that lead to far greater sins.

Someday what's easy might not be enough

No matter what you do—somebody, somewheres, knew that you would.

to remind myself that a person can die while they're still alive, simply by not choosing to live." It's taken me a long time to understand what she'd meant by that. Worry can be pernicious. Left unchecked, it slowly bleeds the soul of joy and replaces it with fear.

Evidently, it takes equally thin parts of kindness and sincerity to marry well.

American girls never whimper.

Religious folk could be so deliciously predictable. He could set his watch by their hypocrisy.

Standing in front of the girl's house, Mama yelled up at the windows, "Katie Adams, you whore, give me my husband back!" When Miss Adams' neighbours complained about all the noise Mama was making, my father came down to quiet her. He kissed her until she cried, but didn't come home.

On any given day, acts of kindness occur all across the city. Someone gives up their bed so someone else can rest their tired, aching bones. Someone hands a bit of change to a stranger. There's hot soup and good fortune, soft words and bread. Then there are the cruel things that happen, the worst that you can imagine. Heaven help you if even one of them finds you. The memory of it will never let you alone.

Sickness made itself at home in their close, dark rooms, disease thriving in the absence of windows and hope.

As we entered the pharmacy, I looked over the items on Miss Everett's list. Preventative powders, toilet vinegars, lavender water, Macassar oil, sea sponges, smelling salts, Bouquet de Rondeletia, extract of patchouli, Grosvrnor's Tooth Powder, cherry bounce, anisette. They were the trappings of women and in this case, of whores.

Like a Gypsy, like a witch, like Mama, she knew how to see things in a person that they'd just as soon forget.

Each day brings another handful of opportunities. It's up to you to make the best of what you're given.

Earth, air, water, fire, In a circle we conspire, To make ourselves dumb so we might see, Across the veil to summon thee. As we are, so you once were. As you are, so we shall be. So may it be, So may it be, So may it be.

I ask myself, is it just a wild flight of imagination to conceive of a world without war … but someone must try … " Julia Grace Wales

How a mother comes to love her child, her caring at all for this thing that's made her heavy, lopsided and slow, this thing that made her wish she were dead … that's the miracle.

Mother, if you love her- Mother, if you love her, keep her clean. Mother, if you lover her, keep her-

The church degraded woman by destroying her self-respect and teaching her to feel consciousness of guilt in the very fact of her existence. To this day, an open, confident look upon a woman's face is deprecated as evil. Death by torture was the method of the church for the repression of woman's intellect, knowledge being held as evil and dangerous in her hands.

In my heart I knew it was the sort of thing she'd find to be a waste of time, but it meant everything to me, the words having come from my heart to my hand to the page, a bit of myself about to be folded square and sent back home.

If you think about the truest joy you've ever experienced, my guess is that it came along by accident. Rather than thinking about fear or even happiness, concentrate on something that will help you grow in new and unexpected ways. Befriend a raven, sing to the moon, write a love poem to the bookstore on the corner. At the very least you'll have stretched and opened yourself up and leaned towards the sun.