A Stitch in Time by Ann Rinaldi


" It's what you've been trying to do all along" he elaborated, "make up for matters that can never be right in this family. Things happen to people in life, Hannah. Terrible things that change people, that sometimes ruin families. You cant set yourself up above such things and try to make them as before. It doesnt work"

" What's the harm in trying?" (she asked)."Especially if some good comes out of it?"

"The harm, Hannah, is that you hurt everyone trying. You open up old wounds. You go against the tide. You prevent the healing. And who's to say good will come out of (what you're doing)?"

Wbb with some quotes from the horse and his boy.

Not even sure which ones to use because the book is full of choice apophthegms.

"My son" (said the Tarkaan) " by all means desist from kicking the venerable and enlightened Vizier: for as a costly jewel retains its value even if hidden in a dunghill, so old age and discretion are to be respected even in the vile persons of our subjects"

"For one of the poets has said, 'Application to business is the root of prosperity, but those who ask questions that do not concern them are steering the ship of folly toward the rock of indigence' "

"And certainly both horses were doing, if not all they could, all they thought they could, which is not quite the same thing".

Things Fall Apart


"He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought:The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger"

[b]"Uh,carry on,"[/b]he said.Turning abruptly,he left.
Becoming Abigail,by Chris Abani pg 13

Nice thread, front page material.

wbb

Pride and prejudice by jane austen

" I would not wish to be hasty in censuring anyone, but i always say what i think"


"A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony, in a moment" ( mr darcy to miss bingley, ch 6)

"You expect me to account for opinions which you choose to call mine, but which i have never acknowledged"

"To yield readily- easily- to the persuasion of a friend is no merit with you"

" To yield without conviction is no compliment to the understanding of either"

"You appear to me, mr darcy, to allow nothing for the influence of friendship and affection".

"IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

the silver chair


“And how shall we start?” said Scrubb.

“Well,” said the Marsh-Wiggle very slowly, “all the others who ever went looking for Prince Rilian started from the same fountain where Lord Drinian saw the lady. They went north, mostly. And as none of them ever came back, we can’t exactly say how they got on.”

“What is a lion?” asked the Witch.

“Oh, hang it all!” said Scrubb. “Don’t you know? How can we describe it to her? Have you ever seen a cat?”

“Surely,” said the Queen. “I love cats.”

“Well, a lion is a little bit–only a little bit, mind you–like a huge cat–with a mane. At least, it’s not like a horse’s mane. you know, it’s more like a judge’s wig. And it’s yellow. And terrifically strong.”

The Witch shook her head. “I see,” she said, “that we should do no better with your lion, as you call it, than we did with your sun.

kidnapped by robert louis stevenson


"If I had been some years younger, what with shame, weariness, and disappointment, I believe I had burst into tears. As it was, I could find no words, neither black nor white, but handed him the letter, and sat down to the porridge with as little appetite for meat as ever a young man had."

I set him on a chair and looked at him. It is true I felt some pity for a man that looked so sick, but I was full besides of righteous anger; and I numbered over before him the points on which I wanted explanation: why he lied to me at every word; why he feared that I should leave him; why he disliked it to be hinted that he and my father were twins–"Is that because it is true?" I asked; why he had given me money to which I was convinced I had no claim; and, last of all, why he had tried to kill me. He heard me all through in silence; and then, in a broken voice, begged me to let him go to bed.

"I'll tell ye the morn," he said; "as sure as death I will."

CHAPTER I

I SET OFF UPON MY JOURNEY TO THE HOUSE OF SHAWS

I will begin the story of my adventures with a certain morning early in the month of June, the year of grace 1751, when I took the key for the last time out of the door of my father's house. The sun began to shine upon the summit of the hills as I went down the road; and by the time I had come as far as the manse, the blackbirds were whistling in the garden lilacs, and the mist that hung around the valley in the time of the dawn was beginning to arise and die away.

Mr. Campbell, the minister of Essendean, was waiting for me by the garden gate, good man! He asked me if I had breakfasted; and hearing that I lacked for nothing, he took my hand in both of his and clapped it kindly under his arm.

"Well, Davie, lad," said he, "I will go with you as far as the ford, to set you on the way." And we began to walk forward in silence.

"Are ye sorry to leave Essendean?" said he, after awhile.

"Why, sir," said I, "if I knew where I was going, or what was likely to become of me, I would tell you candidly. Essendean is a good place indeed, and I have been very happy there; but then I have never been anywhere else. My father and mother, since they are both dead, I shall be no nearer to in Essendean than in the Kingdom of Hungary, and, to speak truth, if I thought I had a chance to better myself where I was going I would go with a good will."

A little farther on, and I was told I was in Cramond parish, and began to substitute in my inquiries the name of the house of Shaws. It was a word that seemed to surprise those of whom I sought my way. At first I thought the plainness of my appearance, in my country habit, and that all dusty from the road, consorted ill with the greatness of the place to which I was bound. But after two, or maybe three, had given me the same look and the same answer, I began to take it in my head there was something strange about the Shaws itself.

People of the City by cyprian ekwensi


"Girls ripen quickly in the city- the men are so impatient"

arrow of God by chinua achebe

The long uproar that followed was largely of approbation. Nwaka had totally destroyed Ezeulu's speech. The last glancing blow which killed it was the hint that the Chief Priest's mother had been a daughter of Okperi. The assembly broke up into numerous little groups of people talking to those who sat nearest to them. One man said that Ezeulu had forgotten whether it was his father or his mother who told him about the farmland. Speaker after speaker rose and spoke to the assembly until it was clear that all the six villages stood behind Nwaka. Ezeulu was not the only man of Umuaro whose mother had come from Okperi. But none of the others dared go to his support

[Akuebue] was the only man among Ezeulu's friends and kinsmen who still came now and again to see him. But when he came he sat in silence or spoke about unimportant things. Today, however, he could not but touch on a new development in the crisis which troubled him. Perhaps Akuebue was the only man in Umuaro who knew that Ezeulu was not deliberately punishing the six villages. He knew that the Chief Priest was helpless; that a thing greater than nte had been caught in nte's trap. So whenever he came to visit Ezeulu he kept clear of the things nearest to their thoughts because they were past talking. But today he could not keep silence over the present move of the Christians to reap the harvest of Umuaro.

"It troubles me," he said, "because it looks like the saying of our ancestors that when brothers fight to death a stranger inherits their father's estate."

"I am one of those they have chosen to go to Okperi tomorrow and bring the loads of our new teacher."

"Oduche!"

"Father!"

"Listen to what I shall say no. When a handshake goes beyond the elbow we know it has turned to another thing. It was I who sent you to join those people because of my friendship to the white man, Wintabota. He asked me to send one of my children to learn the ways of his people and I agreed to send you. I did not send you so that you might leave your duty in my household. Do you hear me? Go and tell the people who chose you to go to Okperi that I said no. Tell them that tomorrow I the day on which my sons and my wives and my son's wife work for me. Your people should know the custom of his land; if they don't you must tell them. Do you hear me?"

Obika was one of the handsomest young men in Umuaro and all the surrounding districts. His face was very finely cut and his nose stood gem, like the note of a gong. His skin was, like his father's, the colour of terracotta. People said of him (as they always did when they saw great comeliness) that he was not born for these parts among the Igbo people of the forests; that in his previous life he must have sojourned among the riverain folk whom the Igbo called Olu.

But two things spoilt Obika. He drank palm wine to excess, and he was given to sudden and fiery anger.

the little white horse

"Humanity can be roughly divided into three sorts of people - those who find comfort in literature, those who find comfort in personal adornment, and those who find comfort in food;"

There you are. She's your hare."

"Hare!" exclaimed Maria. "Why, I thought she was an extra-large rabbit!"

the palm wine drinkard by amos tutuola

“I was a palm-wine drinkard since I was a boy of ten years of age. I had no other work more than to drink palm-wine in my life. - - - But when my father noticed that I could not do any work more than to drink, he engaged an expert palm-wine-tapster for me; he had no other work more than to tap palm-wine every day. So my father gave me a palm-tree farm which was nine miles square and it contained 560,000 palm-trees, and this palm-wine tapster was tapping one hundred and fifty kegs of palm-wine every morning, but before 2 o’clock p.m., I would have drunk it all; after that he would go and tap another 75 kegs.”

second class citizen by buchi emecheta



“At home in Nigeria, all a mother had to do for a baby was wash and feed him and, if he was fidgety, strap him onto her back and carry on with her work while that baby slept. But in England she had to wash piles and piles of nappies, wheel the child round for sunshine during the day, attend to his feeds as regularly as if one were serving a master, talk to the child, even if he was only a day old! Oh, yes, in England, looking after babies was in itself a full-time job.”

“She did not delude herself into expecting Francis to love her. He had never been taught how to love, but had an arresting way of looking pleased at Adah's achievements.”

quote from igbo olodumare (translated)


"Who are you? What are you? What do you amount to?  What do you rank as? What are you looking for? What do you want? What are you looking at? What do you see? What are you considering? What affects you? Where are you coming from? Where are you going? Where do you live? Where do you roam? Answer me! Human being, answer me in a word! One thing is certain- you have got into trouble today, you have climbed a tree beyond it's topmost leaves. . .  you saw me and I saw you, you were approaching and I was approaching, and yet you did not take to your heels. . . have you never heard of me? Has no one told you about me?"

Tpia@ has gone on overdrive.