Important Quotations Explained
1. 124 was
spiteful. Full of a baby's venom.
2. White
people believed that whatever the manners, under every dark skin
was a jungle. Swift unnavigable waters, swinging screaming baboons,
sleeping snakes, red gums ready for their sweet white blood. In
a way . . . they were right. . . . But it wasn't the jungle blacks
brought with them to this place. . . . It was the jungle whitefolks
planted in them. And it grew. It spread . . . until it invaded the
whites who had made it. . . . Made them bloody, silly, worse than even
they wanted to be, so scared were they of the jungle they had made.
The screaming baboon lived under their own white skin; the red gums
were their own.
3. Saying
more might push them both to a place they couldn't get back from.
He would keep the rest where it belonged: in that tobacco tin buried
in his chest where a red heart used to be. Its lid rusted shut.
4. .
. . [I]f you go there—you who was never there—if you go there and
stand in the place where it was, it will happen again; it will be
there, waiting for you . . . [E]ven though it's all over—over and
done with—it's going to always be there waiting for you.
5. And
if she thought anything, it was No. No. Nono. Nonono. Simple. She
just flew. Collected every bit of life she had made, all the parts
of her that were precious and fine and beautiful, and carried, pushed,
dragged them through the veil, out, away, over there where no one
could hurt them. Over there. Outside this place, where they would
be safe.
