“...if a child waited to speak until all the grown-ups settled down and gave her some room to say her piece, the most important things would never get said.”

“In the book, hummin bins made castles, and towers up to the sky. They tamed the animals and took care of them. And hummin bins helped each other. They were always good."When I was done, Ma asked, 'Delly, what are hummin bins?' 'They're like people, but better,' I said. Then I told her, 'When I grow up, I'm going to live with the hummin bins,' and she smiled."But Galveston grabbed the book, 'Let me see that,' she said, and started laughing. 'This says human beings. There's no such things as hummin bins.'"'Ma, is it true?' I asked, and she nodded. 'How come you didn't tell me?' I cried."'I liked the hummin bins better, too,' she said." ..."RB's right, Ferris Boyd. You are a hummin bin." Her eyeballs were wet, like they were swimming.It was quiet, then, till RB's soft cloud voice said, "You're a hummin bin, too, Delly.”

“Then I looked right at Mama, for the first time in what seemed like forever, and she wasn't looking at me, but into me. She was pulling me to her with her eyes, like she used to do. All of a sudden I could see the light that was Mama's shining out of her eyes. I couldn't help smiling at it.'Be careful,' my heart warned me.But I was having a hard time remembering that there as anything to be careful about. Because if I just looked at Mama's eyes...I could tell that the part of her I thought had gone away forever was still there and glowing, only from deep down inside her.”

“When she'd read, her voice wrapped around my head and my heart, and it softened and lightened everything up. It put a pain in my hear that felt good.”

“I was saying the right things, but not the really true things.”

“...all of a sudden I felt filled up again, so that my heart might come up my throat. And I was thinking how that can come over you, out of nowhere, and if it wasn't such a fine feeling, it might almost be frightening. Like there's more love and good thoughts and powerful things inside of you than one body can hold.”

“It thought about the magic that happens when you tell a story right, and everybody who hears it not only loves the story, but they love you a little bit, too, for telling it so well. Like I love Ms. Washington, in spite of myself, the first time I heard her. When you hear somebody read a story well, you can't help but think there's some good inside them, even if you don't know them.”