"It happened that green and crazy summer when Frankie was twelve years old.   This was the summer when for a long time she had not been a member.  She belonged to no club and was a member of nothing in the world" (1).

"As she told the story, it seemed to F. Jasmine that Bernice resembled a strange queen, if a queen can be colored and sitting at a kitchen table.  She unwound the story of her and Ludie like a colored queen unwinding a bolt of cloth of gold" (96).

"Yes, that is the way when you are in love,' said Bernice.  'Invariable.  A thing known and not spoken" (94).

"But in the world of the HOly Lord God Bernice Sandie Brown was a different world, and it was round and just and reasonable.  First, there would be no separate colored people in the world, but all human beings would be light brown colored people and no white people to make the colored people feel cheap and sorry all through their lives.  NO colored people, but all human men and ladies and children as one loving family on the earth" (91).