Where the shadow of the bridge fell I could see down for a long way, but not as far as the bottom. When you leave a leaf in water a long time after awhile the tissue will be gone and the delicate fibres waving slow as the motion of sleep. They don't touch one another, no matter how knotted up they once were, no matter how close they lay once to the bones.

The books I read are the ones I knew and loved when I was a young man and to which I return as you do to old friends.

If happy I can be I will, if suffer I must I can.

They will endure. They are better than we are. Stronger than we are. Their vices are vices aped from white men or that white men and bondage have taught them: improvidence and intemperance and evasion-not laziness: evasion: of what white men had set them to, not for their aggrandizement or even comfort but his own.

Only the peak feels so sound and stable that the beginning of the falling is hidden for a little while.

We could live like counts. ... If all that money is out there, I might as well hack a little on the side and put the novel off.

Menfolks listens to somebody because of what he says. Women don't. They don't care what he said. They listens because of what he is.