"When I walked into the yard everything went quiet. The kids all stopped and stared at me.... All those little bright eyes on me were just waiting to get back to the business of noise. Not one of them looked hungry or tired. And I'm willing to bet that they would look back on the days of Mrs. Harris's yard with the greatest pleasure. Running wild with the animals before the hunters started tracking them down."

--from Black Betty by Walter Mosely

"Jackson Blue had a brilliant mind, he might have been a genius, but he was cowardly and blustery to the core. If he could have put it in a jar, Jackson would have sold his soul for tonight's dinner or, even better, for fifteen minutes with a whore.

"If there is a God he was drinking or mad the night he put Jackson together. Scrawny, lying, and afraid of his own footsteps, Jackson was one of the many friends who would never abandon me--he had nowhere else to go.

"The same God who made Jackson Blue took a crocodile to make the man I was facing.