“The beautiful spring came; and when Nature resumes her loveliness, the human soul is apt to revive also.”

“Death is better than slavery.”

“But to the slave mother New Year's day comes laden with peculiar sorrows. She sits on her cold cabin floor, watching the children who may all be torn from her the next morning; and often does she w...”

“There is a great difference between Christianity and religion at the south. If a man goes to the communion table, and pays money into the treasury of the church, no matter if it be the price of blo...”

“When they told me my new-born babe was a girl, my heart was heavier than it had ever been before. Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women.”

“Southern women often marry a man knowing that he is the father of many little slaves. They do not trouble themselves about it.”

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”

“If I am going to be drownedif I am going to be drownedif I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and t...”

“I'm an Earth ecstatic, and my creed is simple: All life is sacred, life loves life, and we are capable of improving our behavior toward one another. As basic as that is, for me it's also tonic and ...”

“She's the kind of girl who brings you to the moon without you even being aware. The kind of girl you trip in love with, The kind of girl you never forget.”

“Not every story is about a girl who dreams of romance, waiting impatiently and dramatically for a tall, handsome, strong man to fall hopelessly in love with, in the foolish hope that he will protec...”

“But perhaps she has given me the strength and the madness to write about the things that I once desired so long to put against the world.”

“All words are pegs to hang ideas on.”

“A word is not the same with one writer as it is with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.”

“No doubt I shall go on writing, stumbling across tundras of unmeaning, planting words like bloody flags in my wake....”