“I asked Granny one time if she thought green might be God's favorite color since he'd made so many shades of it.”
“Some people is born at the start of a long hard row to hoe. Well, I am older than God's dog and been in this world a long time and it seems to me that right from the git-go, Larkin Stanton had the longest and hardest row I've ever seen.”
“They was no slaves in Sodom unless you counted the ones what was white and female.”
“My mammy used to tell me that they was no such thing as dying. Said we really was just born twice’t. Once to this place, then again into the t’other. Said we entered both like newborn babies. And she said just like we waited for a baby to be born in this world, they’s folks waiting fer us to be born over yonder.”
“You don’t even know what you’ll miss about them. Oh, you have some notion, I reckon. You figure you’ll miss seeing them everyday, stuff like that. But, ye’ve no idea about them little things—”
“Course in my way of figuring, Vernon Lewis ought to have been shot a long time ago for being a fool, but if we start shooting folks for being fools then we’d be shooting right up till the end of time.”
“Instead, power went to those who made things happen: businessmen and local magistrates. Over time, human nature being what it is, these men would create a kind of nobility, sometimes even buying titles from cash-poor foreigners, but this in itself underscores the point. Upward mobility was part of the Dutch character: if you worked hard and were smart, you rose in stature. Today that is a byword of a healthy society; in the seventeenth century it was weird.”
“Humans had a genius for devising instruments of death. Their lives were so short and they seemed to value them so little, sending waves of men to clash in battlefields, then weighing victory by the piled corpses. And if they held their own lives so worthless, the lives of everything else were as fruit to pluck from trees.”
“Sometimes the best offense was avoiding self-destruction.”
“He kissed her lightly on the nose, and she laughed. Blue eyed her with faux seriousness. "How was that? Any weakness?"
"No. But I don't think there would have been anyway."
"Well, then, how about this?" His lips brushed hers, his mouth teasing her lower lip, and her eyes closed and she shivered as his fingers caught her hair. And then suddenly, there wasn't any space between them. The sensation of drowning was there, but it wasn't like her strength was leaving her. It was like she wanted to be part of him. Like she didn't know or care where she ended and he began.
When they drew apart, she whispered, "No weakness."
"Really?" he said. "'Cause I'm feeling a little weak." She felt him smile against her mouth. And they both laughed, shook with it. Their faces were too close, noses and cheeks pressed awkwardly together, but neither one of them moved. She tightened her arms around him, and he held her just as tightly. His breath murmured against her cheek.
"You're safe with me, Mira. And I'm safe with you.”
“There's no hurry. I'm not a pint of half-and-half about to expire. I can wait until I meet the right person.”
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