Important Quotations Explained
1. They have a saying for people who fall down as I do: If a person
is hit hard enough, even if she stands, she falls.
2. Her father sighed. “I never said either side was innocent or
guilty, just ignorant. They've been a part of it, we've been a part of it,
everybody's been a part of it for a long time.”
3. It was just that they knew, as she knew about them. That they were
transplanted, as they had always been, to a place where they fit like extra
toes on a foot. Where they were trusted by no one, exploited, when possible,
by anyone with political ambitions.
4. “Your ambivalence will always be deplored by people who consider
themselves revolutionists, and your unorthodox behavior will cause
traditionalists to gnash their teeth,” said Truman, who was not, himself,
concerned about either group.
5. He . . . wondered if Meridian knew that the sentence of bearing
the conflict in her own soul which she had imposed on herself—and lived
through—must now be borne in terror by all the rest of them.
