Ben H. Winters Quotes

“Freedman Town serves a good purpose - not for the people who live there, Lord knows; people stuck there by poverty, by prejudice, by laws that keep them from moving or working. Freedman Town's purpose is for the rest of the world. The world that sits, like Martha, with dark glasses on, staring from a distance, scared but safe. Create a pen like that, give people no choice but to live like animals, and then people get to point at them and say 'Will you look at those animals? That's what kind of people those people are'.”

“There's no reason that we need to be counting things and adding things up in order to sit down and eat a meal. I enjoy eating so much; I don't want to do match every time I eat. I guarantee you, maybe your diet soda has no calories, but it's still poison. We have to think about what are we putting in our mouths.”

“You see, the world is as big as an elephant or small as a grain of sand, depending on you. You can let it stomp you, gore you, swallow you up. Or you can let it slip into your shell and turn into a pearl.” -- Benjamin East”

“Katherine Mary, w'er going to know each other very well, for many years, I hope. You'll see, you'll come to understand. These big things, these terrible things, are not the important ones. If they were, how could one go on living? No, it is the small, little things that make up a day, that bring fullness and happiness to your life. Your Sergeant coming home, a good dinner, your little Mary laughing, the smell of the woods - oh, so many things, you know them yourself”

“You can't be afraid of stepping on toes if you want to go dancing.”

“character is not made in a crisis- it is only exhibited”

“Change occurs when one becomes what she is not when she tries to become what she is not.”

“Only those who dare truly live.”

“I have mo prejudice against the Southern people... They are just what we would ben in their situation. If slavery did not now exits amongst them, they wld not inrtoduce it. If it did now exist amongst us, we should not instantly give it up... I surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself. (p52)”

“Every night we stopped in a cabin where wood had been stacked, matches left, and canned goods laid out for the chance traveler. All the unknown host received in return was a scribbled note giving our thanks, any news we could think of, and our names. This whole system of northern hospitality was a gigantic chain, for while we were eating this man’s beans, he was undoubtedly farther up the trail, eating somebody else’s.”