“it's what makes you grow up to have younguns and be a sho-nuff mammy all your own ... . A man ain't but trouble, just breath and britches and trouble”

“You don't look strong enough to trouble nobody around here.... We grow our own troubles--it would be a novelty to have some we ain't already used to.”

“What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so.”

“What's the use you learning to do right when it's troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?”

“Patience--"It's just that you needn't have gone to all the trouble." Matthew--"Trouble? What trouble is that, Patience?" His eyes dropped to her mouth. "Don't you see? You're no trouble to me." He lifted his gaze back to hers. "And even if you were, I would go to the ends of the earth to be troubled by you.”

“You should be out stirring up trouble with your friends, not bothering with all them books you read. You know it's them books what make you talk funny.”