“He could live in this shifting place of betrayals within betrayals, of no loyalties honored, of the strong crushing the weak, no more. He preferred soldiering where you knew who your enemies were before the battle began.”

“A real politician, and these were real politicians, never betrays his country to an outsider. He betrays it to himself. He is the enemy within.”

“Sometimes you had to be who you were and endure what happened to you, and to you alone, before you could understand the first thing about it.”

“He said that some people can live from birth to death and have no more thoughts in their heads about the reasons for living than a beetle. But that we were different, he and I. We needed more than a clod of dirt to make our rising up and lying down worth something.”

“Could I be your girl, too?" I asked quickly.The large, broad-shouldered man looked away before he answered. "Well, now," he said, as though he had given it deep thought, "I sure do think I would like that.""But," I said, concerned that he hadn't noticed, "I don't look like your other girls.""You mean because you white?"I nodded. "Abinia," he said, pointing toward the chickens, "you look at those birds. Some of them be brown, some of them be white and black. Do you think when they little chicks, those mamas and papas care about that?”

“Strange that one man's actions could touch so many other people, like a single, thoughtless breath of wind coming in an open window and blowing the playing cards every which way.”

“Nature gives you the face you possess at twenty . . . Life the face you possess at thirty. But the face you have at fifty is the face you deserve.”