It seems to me that trying to live without friends is like milking a bear to get cream for your morning coffee. It is a whole lot of trouble, and then not worth much after you get it.

Tell me, and then again show me, so I can know.

Everybody is two beings: one lives and flourishes in the daylight and stands guard. The other being walks and howls at night.

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

It seems that fighting is a game where everybody is the loser.

I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background........Beside the waters of the Hudson" I feel my race. Among the thousand white persons, I am a dark rock surged upon, and overswept, but through it all, I remain myself. When covered by the waters, I am; and the ebb but reveals me again." How It Feels to Be Colored Me

She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight.