“As soon as we were outside, I whipped my hand from his. 'What's the matter with you? You know he was wrong.' Stacey swallowed to flush his anger, then said gruffly, "I know it, and you know it, but he don't know it, and that's where the trouble is. Now come on before you get us into a real mess.”

“So many things are possible as long as you don't know they are impossible.”

“Winter came in days that were gray and still. They were the kind of days in which people locked in their animals and themselves and nothing seemed to stir but the smoke curling upwards from clay chimneys and an occasional red-winged blackbird which refused to be grounded. And it was cold. Not the windy cold like Uncle Hammer said swept the northern winter, but a frosty, idle cold that seeped across a hot land ever lookung toward the days of green and ripening fields, a cold thay lay uneasy during during its short stay as it crept through the cracks of poorly constucted houses and forced the people inside huddled around ever-burning fires to wish it gone.”

“Poor Christopher-John had fallen into the hands of Miss. Daisy Crocker. I greatly sympathized him, but as in everything else, Christopher John tried to see the bright side in having to face such a shrew every morning. "Maybe she done changed," he said hopefully on the first day of school. However, when classes were over he was noticeably quiet. Well?" I asked him. He shrugged dejectedly and admitted, "She still the same.”

“Now one day, maybe I can forgive John Andersen for what he done to these trees, but I ain't gonna forget it. I figure forgiving is not letting something nag at you—rotting you out.”

“Biting the hand that feeds you, that's what you're doing Mary Logan, biting the hand that feeds you.'Again Mama laughed, 'If that's the case, Daisy, I don't think I need that little bit of food.'With the second book finished, she stared at a small pile of second grade books on her desk.'Well, I just think you're spoiling those children, Mary. They've got to learn how things are sometime.''Maybe so,' said Mama. 'But that doesn't mean they have to accept them. And maybe we don't either.”

“As soon as we were outside, I whipped my hand from his. 'What's the matter with you? You know he was wrong.' Stacey swallowed to flush his anger, then said gruffly, "I know it, and you know it, but he don't know it, and that's where the trouble is. Now come on before you get us into a real mess.”