He had nerve damage: input could not penetrate. The world stalled out at his edges. Sometimes he had trouble speaking to other people, rummaging for language, and it seemed to him that an invisible la...
A feeling settled over Cora. She had not been under its spell in years, since she brought the hatchet down on Blake's doghouse and sent the splinters into the air. She had seen men hung from trees and...
Venturing now or after nightfall. Cora thought better
You can change the law but you can’t change people and how they treat each other.
To think of those Nickel nights where the only sounds were tears and insects, how you could sleep in a room crammed with sixty boys and still understand that you were the only person on earth. Everybo...
They don't give gold bracelets for regrets.
Then it comes, always—the overseer’s cry, the call to work, the shadow of the master, the reminder that she is only a human being for a tiny moment across the eternity of her servitude. The
The whip was the standard punishment for disobedience. Running away was a transgression so large that the punishment enveloped every generous soul on her brief tour of freedom.
The boys knew to hide their enthusiasm over little kid things that still had an allure.
The Great War had always been between the white and the black. It always would be. Cora
She wasn’t surprised when his character revealed itself—if you waited long enough, it always did. Like the dawn.
She is alone with an unattended desk light whose electricity is an expenditure waiting to be itemized and eliminated in the next budget of Lift magazine, Covering the Elevator Industry for Thirty Year...
Sarsaparilla boiled for one of Sybil’s tonics, overpowering the aroma of the roasting meat. Cora
Sanctimony and self-regard are as American as smallpox blankets and supersize meals.
Rumors have flourished in worse soil than this.
Men start off good and then the world makes them mean. The world is mean from the start and gets meaner every day.
Liberty make a body fertile, Georgina said. That, and the knowledge they will not be sold, Cora added.
It had been a humdrum couple of days, reaffirming his belief in reincarnation: everything was so boring that this could not be the first time he'd experienced it.
If you want to see what this nation is all about, you have to ride the rails. Look outside as you speed through, and you’ll find the true face of America.
The buttons of his dark blue uniform allude to an ongoing border dispute with his soft belly.