“Don't you know sugar is brown first? White folks couldn't stand the fact that something so sweet shared the same color as the people who cut the cane, slopped the hogs and picked the cotton. So they bleached it to resemble them, and now they done gone and fooled everybody. You included.”

“A course we different! Everybody know colored people and white people ain't the same. But we still just people.”

“If you're afraid of everyone leaving you, what do you do?"Make them stay."And if you can't do that, or don't know how to?"Ellie shrugged. "I don't know."Yes, you do. In fact, you've done it. You leave first," Coop said, "so you don't have to watch them walk away.”

“and vinegar that makes them sour—and camomile that makes them bitter—and—and barley-sugar and such things that make children sweet-tempered. I only wish people knew that: then they wouldn’t be so stingy about it, you know—”

“I was always sweet, at first. Oh, it's so easy to be sweet to people before you love them.”

“There is no good and evil, only black and white. But either black or white on its own is boring, Jenny. If you mix them you get so many colors— so many colors...”