“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...”

“I know I grew up in the time when a young man in a baggy suit and slicked-down hair stood spraddle-legged in the crossroads of history and talked hot and mean about the colored, giving my poor and ...”

“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...”

“Babies are the buds of life ready to bloom like a fresh flower to refresh humanity.”

“Love can change a person the way a parent can change a baby- awkwardly, and often with a great deal of mess.”

“The only creatures that are evolved enough to convey pure love are dogs and infants.”

“And I can't die easy thinking maybe the menfolks white or black is making a spit cup out of you. Have some sympathy for me. Put me down easy, Janie, I'm a cracked plate.”

“I thought grandmothers had to like you. Its a law or something.”

“Granny always said finding justice was as tough as putting socks on a rooster.”

“Heaven would never be heaven without you.”

“Let your days become a fragrant song where heaven and earth continually collide”

“Heavens is here 'neath the mountain walls,In the song of the wind and the waterfalls,In the watchful stars that blanket the nightAnd the music of birds before the dawn light.Heaven is here in our m...”