Janie looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place.

People can be slave-ships in shoes.

Oh to be a pear tree – any tree in bloom! With kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world!

It's no use of talking unless people understand what you say.

There is something about poverty that smells like death. Dead dreams dropping off the heart like leaves in a dry season and rotting around the feet; impulses smothered too long in the fetid air of underground caves. The soul lives in sickly air. People can be slaveships in shoes.

It is a curious thing to be a woman in the Caribbean after you have been a woman in these United States.

Janie looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place.