“The cat's asleep; I whisper "kitten"Till he stirs a little and begins to purr--He doesn't wake. Today out on the limb(The limb he thinks he can't climb down from)He mewed until I heard him in the house.I climbed up to get him down: he mewed.What he says and what he sees are limited.My own response is even more constricted.I think, "It's lucky; what you have is too."What do you have except--well, me?I joke about it but it's not a joke;The house and I are all he remembers.Next month how will he guess that it is winterAnd not just entropy, the universePlunging at last into its cold decline?I cannot think of him without a pang.Poor rumpled thing, why don't you seeThat you have no more, really, than a man?Men aren't happy; why are you?”

“The days went by for him, all different and all the same. The boy was happy, and yet he didn't know that he was happy, exactly: he couldn't remember having been unhappy. If one day as he played at the edge of the forest some talking bird had flown down and asked him: "Do you like your life" he would not have known what to say, but would have asked the bird: "Can you not like it?”

“Before the bat could answer, the mockingbird exclaimed angrily: "You sound as if there were something wrong with imitating things!""Oh no," the bat said."Well then, you sound as if there something wrong with driving them off. It's my territory, isn't it? If you can't drive things off your own territory what can you do?"The bat didn't know what to say; after a minute the chipmunk said uneasily, "He just meant it's odd to drive them all off and then imitate them so well too.""Odd!" cried the mockingbird. "Odd! If I didn't it really would be odd. Did you ever hear of a mockingbird that didn't?"The bat said politely, "No indeed. No, it's just what mockingbirds do do. That's really why I made up the poem about it--I admire mockingbirds so much, you know."The chipmunk said, "He talks about them all the time.""A mockingbird's sensitive," said the mockingbird; when he said sensitive his voice went way up and way back down. "They get on my nerves. You just don't understand how much they get on my nerves. Sometimes I think if I can't get rid of them I'll go crazy.""If they didn't get on your nerves so, maybe you wouldn't be able to imitate them so well, the chipmunk said in a helpful, hopeful voice.”

“Debt Chauffeur, that's my name for him now, wants to marry me. He asked me down on bended knee, and I would have been honored - except he wants us to live in London, and he wants me to live white. I crowed at that. I laughed so hard and not a tear came. He couldn't understand it. I don't often think on how white I look; it's always been a question of how colored I feel, and I feel plenty colored. He said that no one in London will know that I'm supposed to be colored. And I said I am colored, colored black, the way I talk, the way I cook, the way I do most everything, and he said but you don't have to be. ”

“Funny thing how it is. If a man owns a little property, that property is him, it's part of him, and it's like him. If he owns property only so he can walk on it and handle it and be sad when it isn't doing well, and feel fine when the rain falls on it, that property is him, and some way he's bigger because he owns it. Even if he isn't successful he's big with his property. That is so.''But let a man get property he doesn't see, or can't take time to get his fingers in, or can't be there to walk on it - why, then the property is the man. He can't do what he wants, he can't think what he wants. The property is the man, stronger than he is. And he is small, not big. Only his possessions are big - and he's the servant of his property. That is so, too.”

“He stood up and took a step toward her. "There has been a request for your hand in marriage.""Is that why you kissed me? So you could take me home and then marry me to a man I don't love? Who is he?" she demanded, emotionally spent now and uncaring that tears were streaming down her face.He started toward her."Don't you dare kiss me again," she ordered. "I can't think when you… Just don't," she stammered. "And as for the offer, I decline.""You can't decline until you know who he is," he reasoned."All right. Tell me his name, and then I'll decline. You're going to praise him first though, aren't you?That's what you always do to try to get me to agree," she ended, and even she could hear the heartbreak in her voice."No, I'm not going to praise him. He's riddled with flaws."She stopped trying to run away. "He is?"He slowly nodded. "I have it on good authority that he's stupid and arrogant and obstinate, or at least he was until he realized what a fool he has been.""But that's what I said about… you.""I love you, Bridgid. Will you marry me?”

“He still went out nearly every night. I thought, is this what he's going to do when we have the baby? Have I made another terrible mistake with a man? You don't really know a man until you have a child with him. Then you see so much. Is he kind? Is he tolerant? Is he loving? Or is he immature and egotistical and selfish? When you have a child, it can go two ways with your husband: You love him even more, or you lose all respect for him. And if you lose respect, there's no way to get it back...”