Sugar and Salt Quotes

“Is she pretty?”
That would be a hell yes. Big soft eyes, full pink lips. Legs and tight skirts. And those damn cowboy boots. And the yoga pants and bra top she wore sailing. Long blond hair—-at least he thought it was long; she always kept it wound up and clipped in a messy bun. He’d dated white girls before, a time or two. But never someone that white, from Texas. Or that young. She was what, fifteen years younger, at least. An itty-bitty thing who could throw a grown man to the ground.
“Yeah,” he said. “She’s real pretty.”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“She loved him so much that it hurt. Maybe that was how love worked. If you could handle the pain, you’d find the sweetness.”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“Why do we remember the bad stuff and not the good?”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“They just started throwing these canisters. One of them hit me so I lobbed it back.”
“Nothing at all would have hit you if you’d been minding your business.”
“And nothing will change if nobody takes action against injustice. Remember when you and Mama took me to hear Dr. King speak? Remember what he said? ‘We die when we refuse to stand up for justice.”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“The proper balance of sugar and salt was the key to perfect barbecue sauce. Of course, when it came to barbecue sauce, everybody had an opinion about the combination of acid, aromatics, fruit, and flavorings---the ineffable umami---that made each bite so satisfying.
But Margot Salton knew with utter certainty that it all started with sugar and salt. She'd even named her signature product after it: sugar+salt. This sauce was her superpower. Her secret. Her stock-in-trade. When she'd had nothing---no home, no education, no family, no means of support---she had created the powerful alchemy of flavors that made grown men moan with pleasure, cautious women ignore their diets, and skeptical foodies beg for more.”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“Cyntoia Brown was sentenced to life in prison at age sixteen for the murder of the man who subjected her to abuse and sex trafficking;”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“He didn’t believe in women’s rights, but in controlling women.”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“Based on the reading she’d done about rape trauma, Margie knew she wasn’t crazy, but suffering from PTSD.”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“The expected mental health consequences of forcing a woman to carry her rapist’s baby to term, and having to raise it despite an uncertain future, were well documented. Could be, she’d end up crazy after all.”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“Not for any birth mother I’ve ever met. You don’t ever walk away. You don’t ever forget. This is one of the biggest things that will ever happen to you. One of the biggest things in your life. It will always be part of you. That’s one reason counseling and self-care are part of the process.”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“Due to the system of mandatory cash bail, people in jails across the US have not yet been convicted of a crime, according to the Prison Policy Initiative. Even the innocent might remain in jail for days, weeks, or even years simply because they cannot afford their bail.”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“You don’t believe a woman should be allowed to make private decisions about her own health.”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“Chrystul Kizer, at seventeen a survivor of sex trafficking and abuse, was charged with first degree intentional homicide. LadyKathryn Williams-Julien of New York State killed her husband during an act of domestic violence and was charged with his murder.”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“There is troubling evidence that dismissal on the grounds of self-defense is far more common for men than women.”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“It’s also true that certain medical organizations treat rape survivors with a drug that prevents fertilization but fails to act against a conceived zygote, thus opening the possibility that a pregnancy could occur as the result of the rape.”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“It takes nothing to father a child. It takes everything to be a dad.”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“Turns out a woman choosing adoption, even a woman behind bars, gets a lot more support than a woman who needs an abortion or who plans on keeping her baby.”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“You know what else is my constitutional right? To get an abortion. You don’t get to choose what rights belong to me.”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth. —Buddha”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“force me to have a baby against my will. That’s . . . It’s barbaric. It’s like . . . Handmaid shit.”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“The emotional toll itself was exhausting. Her dreams were haunted by visions of the rape and its aftermath, the violation of everything that made her human.”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“Although she knew her mom was right about kids getting different treatment for doing the same thing,”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“the administrator was known to be an extreme antichoice activist who insisted that a ball of cells the size of a garbanzo bean should supersede the will of a living, breathing woman.”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“Hard? Yeah, especially when they don’t tell people their treatment might be bullshit.”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“And they didn’t think to tell me they were using something that might not work?” Margie felt dizzy with rage. It blew her mind that no one had bothered to explain this to her. It was a violation of a different kind, a complete disregard for her as a person.”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“It? You mean preserving a zygote or blastula or whatever? That’s their moral obligation? Not their obligation to a living, breathing woman who just got raped?”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“How did you convince a whole town that their homegrown hero was a vicious rapist?”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“When Darla told her parents she was pregnant, they made her leave. They were old-school. Said they couldn’t handle the shame.”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“she learned early on that looking pretty wasn’t always an advantage. Sometimes it attracted the wrong kind of attention.”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“protested that a big majority of Black men were drafted compared to whites. It seemed wrong that men who were still struggling for equality at home were being shipped overseas for a cause most people didn’t even understand.”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt