“But it was so much more. In that white blouse you wore, you looked like Grace Kelly, sharing a joke with a schnauzer, then you smiled at me and i was included, the three of us alone together. I thought, there's a woman I could die for.”

“No one messes me around, I don't give second chances and I never waste tears over people who aren't worth it. I save them for the people who are.”

“Nobody gets to be Queen of England by being loveable. You will have to play your cards right.”

“You have to choose the best, every day, without compromise...guided by your own virtue and highest ambition”

“In the cellar, the two young women were shrouded in darkness as if they were already in their grave.”

“A little white woman, . . . [a] tiny little white woman I could fit in my pocket.’ . . . ‘And I don’t know why I’m surprised. You don’t even notice it – you never notice. You think it’s normal. Everywhere we go, I’m alone in this… this sea of white. I barely know any black folk any more, Howie. My whole life is white. I don’t see any black folk unless they be cleaning under my feet in the fucking café in your fucking college. Or pushing a fucking hospital bed through a corridor . . . ‘I gave up my life for you. I don’t even know who I am any more.’ . . . ‘Could you have found anybody less like me if you’d scoured the earth? . . . My leg weighs more than that woman. What have you made me look like in front of everybody in this town? You married a big black bitch and you run off with a fucking leprechaun?”

“NINAThink of me sometimes.TRIGORINI shall never forget you. I shall always remember you as I saw you that bright day--do you recall it?--a week ago, when you wore your light dress, and we talked together, and the white seagull lay on the bench beside us.”