Cassie Louise Lightfoot Quotes

“Sleeping on Tar Beach was magical. Lying on the roof in the night, with stars and skyscraper buildings all around me, made me feel rich, like I owned all that I could see.”

“He’ll be rich and won’t have to stand on 24-story-high girders and look down. He can look at his building going up.”

“Tonight we’re going up to Tar Beach. Mommy is roasting peanuts and frying chicken, and Daddy will bring home a watermelon. Mr. and Mrs. Honey will bring the beer and their old green card table. And then the stars will fall around me, and I will fly to the union building.”

“I would always remember when the stars fell down around me and lifted me up above the George Washington Bridge. ”

“Daddy took me to see the new union building he is working on. He can walk on steel girders high up in the sky and not fall. They call him the Cat.”

The bridge was my most prized possession.

“I have told him it’s very easy, anyone can fly. All you need is somewhere to go that you can’t get any other way. The next thing you know, you’re flying among the stars.”

“Well, Daddy is going to own that building, ‘cause I’m gonna fly over it and give it to him. Then it won’t matter that he’s not in their old union, or whether he’s colored a half-breed Indian, like they say.”

“And Mommy can laugh and sleep late like Mrs. Honey, and we can have ice cream every night for dessert.”

“All I had to do was fly over it for it to be mine forever. I can wear it like a giant diamond necklace, or just fly above it and marvel at its sparkling beauty. I can fly-yes, fly. Me, Cassie Louise Lightfoot, only eight years old and in the third grade, and I can fly. That means I am free to go wherever I want for the rest of my life.”