Marilyn Nelson

“Since she seen Fortune head in that big pot Miss Lydia say that room make her feel ill, sick with the thought of boiling human broth. I wonder how she think it make me feel? To dust the hands what use to stroke my breast; to dust the arms what hold me when I cried; to dust where his soft lips were and his chest what curved its warm against my back at night. From the poem "Dinah's Lament" (15)”

“I did not have to learn to love you: You were chosen for me. I knew that the first time I saw you.—George Washington Carver”

“How sweet it is to let God purge our souls of ego and bitterness, and to have a little taste of heaven here on earth.”

“When we lose contact, we see only hate,only injustice, a giant so greatits shadow blocks our sun.”

“The filth hissed at us when we venture out--always in twos or threes, never alone--seems less a language spoken than one spatin savage plosives, primitive, obscene:a cavemob nya-nya, limited in frameof reference and novelty, the samesuggestions of what we or they could door should, ad infinitum.”

“What is gentlest in love is love's violence.Losing yourself in love, you reach love's goal.Love makes you suffer, as love makes you whole.Love steals your everything and makes you rich.Love is both meaningless and poetry.Captured by love, by love you are set free.”