You come from your mauma, you sleep in the bed with her till you're near twenty years grown, and you still don't know what haunches in the dark corners of her.

How could I choose someone who would force me to give up my own small reach for meaning? I chose myself, and without consolation.

Don't be telling me--can't be done. That's some god damney white talk, that's what that is.

To condemn slavery was one thing—that I could do in my own individual heart—but female ministers!

I was not sorry for loving Charleston or for leaving it. Geography had made me who I was.

You two would get on like a house on fire. Don't douse the flames before you've struck a match.

This is me figuring good behavior is for someone much younger." --Kestrel

An act of mastery is mastery itself.

When I was a kid, one of my favorite books was George Gamow's 'One Two Three ... Infinity: Facts and Speculations of Science.'

I can't cook. I can barely make a bowl of cereal.

The behavior of an individual is determined not by his racial affiliation, but by the character of his ancestry and his cultural environment.

No people to whom liberty is given can hold it as firmly and wear it as grandly as those who wrench their liberty from the iron hand of the tyrant.

Pride seems tew be quite equally distributed; the man who owns the carriage and the man who drives it seem tew have it just alike.

When a woman gets the idea of justice, there's no teaching her any sense.

I've never been without a dog. I've made trips across the country with a dog. I've been in that angst of loneliness, where you're really alone in the universe, except for the dog.