“I see no priestly garments on you. There is no ephod on your belt. You presume to speak for Yahweh? You speak his name aloud so lightly?”

“That night was the first time I understood the covering. The covering is the fire. It is the strength, courage, and power Yahweh equips us with. It girds a man's loins when he needs it and lets a man know that Yahweh forgives him when he fails. It snaps our legs when we need it. It speaks Yahweh's wise counsel... It comes only from Yahweh, who alone is the shepherd that we need.”

“....I think that the warriors who have aided me are sent to us much like the covering is. Yahweh determines what we need and sends it in the day of war, sometimes even without our asking, thogh Ihave found that asking is what he wants from us.Benaiah was confused...But why the day of war?... Why not everyday?(David) Every day is the day of war.”

“If your courage holds in the small battles, it will hold in the great ones.”

“It is a comfort to know that, regardless of our mistakes, the God who loved, forgave, and empowered David does the same for us.”

“When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.”

“One of the effects of indoctrination, of passing into the anglo-centrism of British West Indian culture, is that you believe absolutely in the hegemony of the King's English and in the proper forms of expression. Or else your writing is not literature; it is folklore, or worse. And folklore can never be art. Read some poetry by West Indian writers--some, not all--and you will see what I mean. The reader has to dissect anglican stanza after anglican stanza for Caribbean truth, and may never find it. The anglican ideal -- Milton, Wordsworth, Keats -- was held before us with an assurance that we were unable, and would never be able, to achieve such excellence. We crouched outside the cave.”