It's a funny thing, the less people have to live for, the less nerve they have to risk losing nothing.

So in Jamaica it is the aim of everybody to talk English, act English and look English. And that last specification is where the greatest difficulties arise. It is not so difficult to put a coat of European culture over African culture, but it is next to impossible to lay a European face over an African face in the same generation.

For four hundred years the blacks of Haiti had yearned for peace. for three hundred years the island was spoken of as a paradise of riches and pleasures, but that was in reference to the whites to whom the spirit of the land gave welcome. Haiti has meant split blood and tears for blacks.

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

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

My head was full of misty fumes of doubt.

She had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she knew how not to mix them.