“At April'Toss your gay heads,Brown girl trees;Toss your gay lovely heads;Shake your brown slim bodies;Stretch your brown slim arms;Stretch your brown slim toes.Who knows better than we,With the dark, dark bodies,What it meansWhen April comes a-laughing and a-weepingOnce againAt our hearts?”

“it matters not what we have been but this an always this: what we shall be.”

“If you want me, just whistle. You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow."(as Marie 'Slim' Browning in To Have and Have Not)”

“The ground upon which you stand is holy ground:never-never surrender it.”

“Hold on to your divine blush, your innate rosy magic, or end up brown. Once you're brown, you'll find out you're blue. As blue as indigo. And you know what that means. Indigo. Indigoing. Indigone.”

“I reached out a hand, and touched her. Her body was hard, and slim, and lithe, and her breasts felt like breasts that Gauguin might have painted. Her mouth, in the darkness, was soft and warm against mine.People come into your life for a reason.”

“Up close, I see that his eyes are brown. Dark, dark brown. Nearly black.Sinful.”