“I wasn't trying to work out my own ancestry. I was trying to get people to feel slavery. I was trying to get across the kind of emotional and psychological stones that slavery threw at people.”

“Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”

“We shall need all the anti-slavery feeling in the country, and more; you can go home and try to bring the people to your views, and you may say anything you like about me, if that will help... When the hour comes for dealing with slavery, I trust I will be willing to do my duty though it cost my life.”

“I felt a constant, low-flying desperation, the kind you feel when you are trying, trying, trying to get something you will never, ever get.”

“It seemed to me the way it must feel to people who cut themselves on purpose. Not pretty, but clean. Not good, but void of regret. I was trying to heal. Trying to get the bad out of my system so I could be good again. To cure me of myself.”

“I am always trying to 'preserve' things by getting other people to read what I have written, and feel what I felt.”