“I always root for the black man, like penance for something I had not part in creating.”

“I want to create a root word where the root is “root.” Something like rootree.”

“I didn’t want to see this, didn’t want to think about this. I didn’t want to imagine him inside her. I didn’t want to know that something I hated so much had taken root in the body I loved.Jacob Black, Breaking Dawn, Chapter 9, p.174”

“...my point is that the only authentic identity for the African is the tribe...I am Nigerian because a white man created Nigeria and gave me that identity. I am black because the white man constructed black to be as different as possible from his white. But I was Igbo before the white man came.”

“It all began, as I have said, when the Boss, sitting in the black Cadillac which sped through the night, said to me (to Me who was what Jack Burden, the student of history, had grown up to be) "There is always something."And I said, "Maybe not on the Judge."And he said, "Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something.”

“A relationship isn't something that has to be created in a day or perfected in a day. Part of the game is to keep working on it. It's something that'll always be just a little flawed.”