“Momma kept a garden, which sounds romantic to people who have never held a hoe”

“Momma, a welfare cheater. A criminal who couldn't stand to se her kids go hungry, or grow up in slumbs and end up mugging people in dar corners. I guess the system didn't want her to get off relief, the way it kept sending social workers around to be sure Momma wasn't trying to make things better.”

“About how their song had never sounded so sweet.And of the man who held her.Of how it felt as if he was the home she’d never had.”

“Sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot have until they forget the words”

“The pleasure of eating should be an extensive pleasure, not that of the mere gourmet. People who know the garden in which their vegetables have grown and know that the garden is healthy will remember the beauty of the growing plants, perhaps in the dewy first light of morning when gardens are at their best. Such a memory involves itself with the food and is one of the pleasures of eating. (pg. 326, The Pleasures of Eating)”

“A willingness to lose one's self in a story was the first step to learning compassion, to appreciating other cultures, to realizing what possibilities the world held for people who kept at life despite the odds.”