“One white man on the platform in South Carolina asked us where we were going--we had got off the train to get some fresh air and to dust the grit and dust out of our clothes. When we said Africa he looked offended and tickled too. Niggers going to Africa, he said to his wife. Now I have seen everything.”

“When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said "Let us pray." We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.”

“One day when I went to see him (Picasso), we were looking at the dust dancing in a ray of sunlight that slanted in through one of the high windows. He said to me, 'Nobody has any real importance to me. As far as I'm concerned, other people are like those little grains of dust floating in the sunlight. It takes only a push of the broom and out they go.'I told him I had often noticed in his dealings with others that he considered the rest of the world only little grains of dust. But I said, as it happened, I was a little grain of dust gifted with autonomous movement and who didn't therefore need a broom. I could go out by myself.”

“Now, where were we?” he said. “Oh, yes. We were about to have some honest conversation. Roadkill, are you in love with Hawk?”Roadkill sighed and asked plaintively, “Can’t we just go back to prison?”

“Mr Boultbee seems to have done us a good turn," said Nicholas. "I gather his sermons were not much liked."No; we got very tired of Africa and I didn't feel that what he told us rang quite true. He said that one African chief had had a thousand wives. I found that a little difficult to believe."Well, we know what men are," said Jane casually, surprised that Miss Dogget, with her insistence on men only wanting one thing, should have found this difficult to believe.”

“When Trace simply held her hands out to her sides and looked at her, Priss asked, "Are we going to have sex now?"His mouth twitched, and his gaze warmed, but he sounded dead serious when he said, "Yeah, I think we are.”