She's got those big black eyes with plenty shiny white in them that makes them shine like brand new money and she knows what God gave women eyelashes for, too. Her hair is not what you might call straight. It's negro hair, but it's got a kind of white flavor. Like the piece of string out of a ham. It's not ham at all, but it's been around ham and got the flavor.

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

Friendship is a mysterious and ocean-bottom thing. Who can know the outer ranges of it? Perhaps no human being has ever explored its limits.

When I pitched headforemost into the world I landed in the crib of Negroism.

If science ever gets to the bottom of Voodoo in Haiti and Africa, it will be found that some important medical secrets, still unknown to medical science, give it its power, rather than the gestures of ceremony.

I did not just fall in love. I made a parachute jump.

I made up my mind to keep my feelings to myself since they did not seem to matter to anyone else but me.