"See? See what you can do? Never mind you can’t tell one letter from another, never mind you born a slave, never mind you lose your name, never mind your daddy dead, never mind nothing. Here, this here, is what a man can do if he puts his mind to it and his back in it. Stop sniveling,’ [the land] said. ‘Stop picking around the edges of the world. Take advantage, and if you can’t take advantage, take disadvantage. We live here. On this planet, in this nation, in this county right here. Nowhere else! We got a home in this rock, don’t you see! Nobody starving in my home; nobody crying in my home, and if I got a home you got one too! Grab it. Grab this land! Take it, hold it, my brothers, make it, my brothers, shake it, squeeze it, turn it, twist it, beat it, kick it, kiss it, whip it, stomp it, dig it, plow it, seed it, reap it, rent it, buy it, sell it, own it, build it, multiply it, and pass it on – can you hear me? Pass it on!"
— Toni Morrison (Song of Solomon)

"‘How come it can’t fly no better than a chicken?’ Milkman asked.

‘Too much tail. All that jewelry weighs it down. Like vanity. Can’t nobody fly with all that [stuff]. Wanna fly, you got to give up the [stuff] that weighs you down.’

The peacock jumped onto the hood of the Buick and once more spread its tail, sending the flashy Buick into oblivion."
— Toni Morrison

"The ransom of a man's life is his wealth, but a poor man has nothing to fear."
— Proverbs 13:7-8

"There were, of course, tales of aplenty of heroes defeating monsters in song and story, mostly coming from the mythical traditions of Europe. And it's true that witches and monsters had plagued mankind in stories and poems for as long as the printing press had turned out pamphlets and newspapers. What had never been tried before, though, was the crystallization of the two worlds, authored in place by a single, heroic protagonist.

(about Robert E. Howard's Solomon Kane)"
— Mark Finn (Blood and Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard)