“I went to the shoemaker to collect his wastepaper. One of them asked me if my book was communistic. I replied that it was realistic. He cautioned me that it was not wise to write of reality.”

“The book is man's best invention so far.”

“Why is it that the saints of June are honored with fire?”

“No, I wanted to say, he didn't cut off her hands because he didn't have to, he had cut them off long before, with years of keeping all authority in his own palms, all the rules and all the power and all the answers emanating from him and no one else. And if you don't understand that, if you've never been in such a family, then you can't know the way the mind shackles itself and amputates its own limbs so adeptly that you never think to miss them, never think that you had anything so obscene as choice.”

“What makes the self?Experiences. Acculturation.What else?I don't know.What's within you.She says, I don't know what was within me and what got put there by my life as it was lived.You can never know that.No.But there is a you that was there before you were born and that nobody shaped or changed or could have changed.”

“Kuru fasulyeleri ateşe koydum. Onları yıkarken, "Bugün zengin insanlar gibiyim," dedim. "Fasulye hazırlıyorum.”

“Skeçler yazıp sirk müdürüne götürdüm. Bana, "Ne yazık ki zencisiniz." diye cevap verdiler. Kıvırcık saçlarımla, esmer tenimi ne kadar sevdiğimi unutuyorlar halbuki. Hatta zencilerin saçlarını beyazlarınkinden daha muntazam buluyorum. Bizim saçlarımız daha uysaldır, istediğimiz yerde kalır. Beyazlarınki ise en küçük bir baş hareketinde yer değişir.”