“America sometimes resembles, at least from the point of view of a black man, an exceedingly monotonous minstrel show; the same dances, same music, same jokes. One has done (or been) the show so long that one can do it in one’s own sleep.”

“But marrying within one's own family can get monotonous. One has heard all the same family stories, knows all the jokes and all the same recipes. No novelty.”

“Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays.”

“By now, I probably preferred secondhand books to new ones. In America such items were disparagingly referred to as “previously owned”; but this very continuity of ownership was part of their charm. A book dispensed its explanation of the world to one person, then another, and so on down the generations; different hands held the same book and drew sometimes the same, sometimes a different wisdom from it.”

“Take one story, viewed from two different angles. It is the same day, the same moment, but one angle ends happily... and the other ends badly.”

“The feeling to bury one’s head in a ditch can be an overwhelming one, but Annwyl fought it all the same.”