“It is a common condition of being poor... you are always afraid that the good things in your life are temporary, that someone can take them away, because you have no power beyond your own brute str...”

“But I hope I will never have a life that is not surrounded by books, by books that are bound in paper and cloth and glue, such perishable things for ideas that have lasted thousands of years, or ju...”

“Every life deserves a certain amount of dignity, no matter how poor or damaged the shell that carries it.”

“In water so fine, a few minutes of bad memory all but disappear downstream, washed away by ten thousand belly busters, a million cannonballs. Paradise was never heaven-high when I was a boy but wai...”

“We are good at stories. We hoard them, like an old woman in a room full of boxes, but now and then we pull out our best, and spread them out. We talk of the bad years when the cotton didn't open, a...”

“This is home and home is not something you remember, it is something you see every day and every moment.”

“Peace is the byproduct of understanding in conjunction with the ability to agree or disagree in harmony”

“Mobiles reputation as the birthplace of Mardi Gras in North America does not rest solely on the fact that a few half-starved French colonists observed the pre-Lenten feasts here 300 years ago In 18...”

“He never had nothing of his own before, except the kid, and he cant claim but half the credit, there, maybe less. T.J.s blond like his mamma, and stubborn, too. Wont let nobody hold him except her....”

“The ever more sophisticated weapons piling up in the arsenals of the wealthiest and the mightiest can kill the illiterate, the ill, the poor and the hungry, but they cannot kill ignorance, illness,...”

“Hungry men are not known for their patience or their kindness.”

“Hunger does not come from body; it comes from mind. Once a person starts to feel hungry all the time, nothing satisfies him whatsoever. This hunger covers up all the aspects of life ... The only th...”