"Maybe that was the trouble. She got the first and biggest share of everything – first whack at the new clothes and the biggest part of any special treat. Hazel never had to grab for anything and she was soft."
"That was the best of all. To speak the truth and be attended."
"What did he understand? Nothing. Where was he headed? Nowhere. What did he want? To know. What? A meaning. Why? A riddle."
"The eyes of his friend were moist and dark, and in them he saw the little rectangled pictures of himself that he had watched a thousand times."
"Today we are not put up on the platforms and sold at the courthouse square. But we are forced to sell our strength, our time, our souls during almost every hour that we live. We have been freed from one kind of slavery only to be delivered into another. Is this freedom?"
"It was like that kid had been born knowing how to read. He was only in the second grade but he loved to read stories by himself - and he never asked anybody else to read to him."
"Her face felt like it was scattered in pieces and she could not keep it straight. The feeling was a whole lot worse than being hungry for any dinner, yet it was like that. I want--I want--I want--was all that she could think about--but just what this real want was she did no know."
"I feels sorrier for him than anybody I knows. I expect he done read more books than any white man in this town. He done read more books and he done worried about more things. He full of books and worrying. He done lost God and turned his back on religion. His troubles come down just to that."
"I got to wear blinders all the time so I won't think sideways or in the past."
"He did not wholly understand the intricate play of ideas and the complex phrases, but as he read he sensed a strong, who purpose behind the words and he felt that he almost understood."
"In one of their quarrels, they had begun calling each other Mister. and Misses., and since then they had never made it up enough to change it."
"People felt themselves watching him even before they knew that there was anything different about him. His eyes made a person think that he heard things that no one else had ever heard, that he knew things no one had ever guessed before. He did not seem quite human."
"That was all he wanted for himself – to give to her. Biff's mouth hardened. He had done nothing wrong but in him he felt a strange guilt. Why? The dark guilt in all men, unreckoned and without a name."
"I am not meant to be alone and without you who understands."
"Each day was very much like any other day, because they were alone so much that nothing ever disturbed them."
"Because in some men, it is in them to give up everything personal at some time, before it ferments and poisons - throw it to some human being or some human idea."
"But you haven't never loved God nor even nair person. You hard and tough as cowhide. But just the same I knows you. This afternoon you going to roam all over the place without never being satisfied. You going to traipse all around like you haves to find something lost. You going to work yourself up with excitement. Your heart going to beat hard enough to kill you because you don't love and don't have peace. And then some day you going to bust loose and be ruined."
"We live in the richest country in the world. There's plenty and to spare for no man, woman, or child to be in want. And in addition to this our country was founded on what should have been a great, true principle - the freedom, equality and rights of each individual. Huh! And what has come of that start? There are corporations worth billions of dollars- and hundreds of thousands of people who don't get to eat."
"A person can't pick up they children and just squeeze them to which-a-way they wants them to be."
"Doctor Copeland belt old evil anger in him. The words rose inchoately to his throat and he could not speak them. They would listen to the old man. Yet to word the reason they will not attend."
"He was like a man who had served a term in prison or had been to Harvard College or had left for a long time with foreigners in South America. He was like a person who had been somewhere that other people are not likely to go or had done something that others are not apt to do."
"It wasn't like she was lonely and in fact – she had understood it all in every way except with her brain. Now she knew that she knew."
"Wonderful music like this was the worst hurt there could be. The whole world was the symphony, and there was not enough of her to listen."
"The old bitterness came up in him and he did not have time to cogitate and push it down."
"There was another thing bigger than the tiredness – and this was the strong crew purpose."