But her brain was not interested in the future. Loaded with the past and hungry for more, it left her no room to imagine, let alone plan for, the next day.

Who's Got Game? The Ant or the Grasshopper? The Lion or the Mouse? Poppy or the Snake?

So this is what insanity is. Not goofy behavior, but watching a sudden change in the world you used to know.

One of the monstrous things that slavery in this country caused was the breakup of families. I mean, physical labor, horrible; beatings, horrible; lynching death, all of that, horrible. But the living life of a parent who, A, has no control over what happens to your children, none. They don't belong to you. You may not even nurse them. They may be shipped off somewhere, as in "Beloved" the mother was, to be nursed by somebody who was not able to work in the fields and was a wet nurse.

The pieces I am, she gather them and gave them back to me in all the right order.

Lay my head on the railroad line. Train come along; pacify my mind.

the hopelessness that comes from knowing too little and feeling too much (so brittle, so dry he is in danger of the reverse: feeling nothing and knowing everything)