Her old thoughts were going to come in handy now, but new words would have to be made and said to fit them.

A great state is a well-blended mash of something of all the people and all of none of the people. The liquor of statecraft is distilled from the mash you got.

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.

You'se something tuh make uh man forgit to git old and forgit tuh die.

Grown people know that they do not always know the why of things, and even if they think they know, they do not know where and how they got the proof. Hence the irritation they show when children keep on demanding to know if a thing is so and how the grown folks got the proof of it. It is so troublesome because it is disturbing to the pigeonhole way of life.

Magic is older than writing. So nobody knows how it started.

Like the dead-seeming, cold rocks, I have memories within that came out of the material that went to make me. Time and place have had their say.