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. (Pg. 233)
. . . [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. (Pg. 43-44)
"No more running-from nothing. I will never run from another thing on this earth. I took one journey
and I paid for the ticket, but let me tell you something, Paul D Garner: it cost too much!" (Pg. 18)
"It's so hard for me to believe in [time]. Some things go. Pass on. Some things just stay. I used to think it
was my rememory. . . But it's not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it's gone, but the
place-the picture of it-stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world". (Pg. 43)
“To Sethe, the future was a matter of keeping the past at bay.” (pg. 51)
"But [Sethe's] brain was not interested in the future. Loaded with the past and hungry for more, it left
her no room to imagine, let alone plan for, the next day" (Pg. 83)
"Only when she was dead would they be safe. The successful ones--the ones who had been there
enough years to have maimed, mutilated, maybe even buried her--kept watch over the others who were
still in her cock-teasing hug, caring and looking forward, remembering and looking back." (pg. 128)