That is how the European tribes operate, she said, If they can't control it, they destroy it.

see chains on another person and be glad they are not your own--such was the good fortune permitted colored people, defined by how much worse it could be at any moment.

Men start off good and then the world makes them mean. The world is mean from the start and gets meaner every day. It uses you up until you only dream of death.

Now that she had run away and seen a bit of the country, Cora wasn't sure the document described anything real at all. America was a ghost in the darkness, like her.

Stolen bodies working stolen land. It was an engine that did not stop, its hungry boiler fed with blood.

Resentment was the hinge of her personality.

Slavery is a sin when whites were put to the yoke, but not the African. All men are created equal, unless we decide you are not a man.

From the trunk of their scheme, choices and decisions sprouted like branches and shoots.

What a world it is, Cora thought, that makes a living prison into your only haven. Was she out of bondage or in its web: how to describe the status of a runaway?

White man trying to kill you slow every day, and sometimes trying to kill you fast. Why make it easy for him? That was one kind of work you could say no to.

Racial prejudice rotted one's faculties, he said.

There was nothing more bitter than a soul who had had its chance and thrown it away.

I am neither accusing President Obama of having committed high crimes and misdemeanors nor advocating his impeachment.

There's much to be said for challenging fate instead of ducking behind it.

You have to learn how to be in scary areas, make those comfortable, then go to the next scary area and make it comfortable.

A man may be a false prophet and yet speak the truth.

Wanting and needing are two different things.

Each generation makes it's own accounting to its children.

If you're sitting around thinking what other people think about your work, you'll just become paralysed.

I was always an Olsen. I never thought of myself as a Brady. I never actually wanted to be a Brady. I always preferred my own family to the Bradys.

You were given the power to love in order to use it, no matter what pain it may cause you.