I watched him, filled with tenderness and ache, wondering what it was that connected us. Was it the wounded places down inside people that sought each other out, that bred a kind of love between them?

Novels attempt to render human experience; that's really all they are. They are meant to convey empathy for the character.

He'd gone to church for forty years and was only getting worse. It seemed like this should tell God something.

"Why is it sports is the only thing white people see us being successful at? I don't want to play football," he said. "I wanna be a lawyer." "That's fine with me," I said, a little annoyed. "I've just never heard of a Negro lawyer, that's all. You've got to hear of these things before you can imagine them." "Bullshit. You gotta imagine what's never been."

I think there must be a place inside of us where dreams go and wait their turn.

My ultimate authority is the divine voice in my own soul. Period.

I don't hold to the idea that God causes suffering and crisis. I just know that those things come along and God uses them. We think life should be a nice, clean ascending line. But inevitably something wanders onto the scene and creates havoc with the nice way we've arranged life to fall in place.