So I heard the boom of my father's rifle when he shot my best friend. A bullet only costs about two cents, and anybody can afford that.

I hate my country. There are so many rich people who don't share their shit. They're like spoiled little ten-year-old bullies on the playground. They hog the monkey bars and the slide and the seesaw. And if you complain even a little bit, if you try to get just one spin on the merry-go-round, the bullies beat the shit out of you.

Hell, sometimes it feels like the whole country is on fire. Like a constant conflagration is burning too close to all poor people. Shouldn't rich-ass America be taking care of everybody?

It sucks to be poor, and it sucks to feel that you somehow deserve to be poor.

Poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No poverty only teaches you how to be poor.

Scholars talk about the endless cycle of poverty and racism and classism and crime. But I don't see it as a cycle, as a circle. I see it as a locked room filled with the people who share my DNA. This room has recently been set afire and there's only one escape hatch, ten feet off the ground. And I know I have to build a ladder out of the bones of my fallen family in order to climb to safety. pg 311

A bullet only costs about two cents, and anybody can afford that.