“I glanced up into round black eyes, ringed in yellow, but in some small part I saw humanity there. Sadness. It blinked. "Made," it said quietly, almost ashamed.”

“The ball was held in a middle-class home. The girls were anemic - some of them; the others were red as raspberries. John liked the pale ones best, the ones with black or blue rings round their eyes. They looked so sad and suffering and pitiable, and they cast tender yearning glances at him, such yearning glances.”

“Butch was quiet for a time. Then he said, "I think that's why I like Jane.""huh?""When you look at her? You actually see her, and when's the last time that's happened for you?"V geared himself up, then stared hard into Butch's eyes. "I saw you. even though it was wrong. I saw you."Shit, he sounded sad. Sad and...lonely. Which made him want to change the subject.”

“It was human who said BLACK is SAD. I don't believe. You know why. Because I am BLACK but am HAPPY.”

“This afternoon I was sitting quietly with some twenty roughs when I noticed a sudden hush come over the room. I glanced nervously round and observed that forty pairs of eyes were on me...I was reading a book. They had never seen someone read a book before. They were like natives watching a white man shave.”

“I'm not who you think I am, Abby," he said in English.I almost smiled. It was the kind of melodramatic line people said in bad made-for-TV movies, but then I saw his eyes, bleak and distant, and I knew he was telling the truth."I thought you were Dante Alexander, foreign-exchange student visiting from Italy."He shook his head slowly, sadly. "Not exactly.”