...the City is what they want it to be: thriftless, warm, scary and full of amiable strangers. No wonder they forget pebbly creeks and when they do not forget the sky completely think of it as a tiny piece of information about the time of day or night.

...when the little boy discovered, at four, the same thing Mr. Smith had learned earlier -- that only birds and planes could fly -- he lost all interest in himself.

if they put an iron circle around your neck I will bite it away

Shallow believers prefer a shallow God.

If you can only be tall because someone else is on their knees, then you have a serious problem. And white people have a very, very serious problem.

I have the wonderful pleasure of finishing the book and closing it. And I don't read them later.

Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.