“It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights—if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different.”
“We are made up of different parts, some good, some bad, and a healthy mind can tolerate this ambivalence and juggle both good and bad at the same time. Mental illness is precisely about a lack of this kind of integration - we end up losing contact with the unacceptable parts of ourselves.”
“Love isn’t always pretty. Sometimes you spend all your time hoping it’ll eventually be something different. Something better. Then, before you know it, you’re back to square one, and you lost your heart somewhere along the way.”
“You’re different. You’re more perfect. Time is three things for most people, but for you, for us, just one. A singularity. One moment. This moment. Like you’re the center of the clock, the axis on which the hands turn. Time moves about you but never moves you. It has lost its ability to affect you. What is it they say? That time is theft? But not for you. Close your eyes and you can start all over again. Conjure up that necessary emotion, fresh as roses.”
“What happened was: they became a team, a family of two. There had been times before they ran away when they had acted like a team, but those were very different from feeling like a team. […] You might call it caring. You could even call it love. And it is very rarely, indeed, that it happens to two people at the same time—especially a brother and a sister who had always spent more time with activities than they had with each other. ”
“I didn’t say differently, I said different. I want to go back different. I, Claudia Kinkaid, want to be different when I go back. Like being a heroine is being different.”
“It’d probably work out. No good worrying too much. But it would be strange actually having a boy living indoors. He got on well with most of the black kids at school, but having one at home all the time would be bound to be a bit different.”
“Erica could scarcely remember the last time she had been at Calstead, and on that occasion they had arrived in the car. The countryside looked very different from the top of a bus; there was more of it, for a start, and it seemed rather flat after the hills of Norwich.”
″ ‘Well’, said Frances, ‘there are many different things to eat and they taste many different ways. But when I have bread and jam I always know what I am getting, and I am always pleased.’ ”
″ ‘That’s a good lunch,’ said Albert. ‘I think it’s nice that there are all different kinds of lunches and breakfasts and dinners and snacks. I think eating is nice.’ ”
“Whatever it was in the swamp, it was something different. Tricky... wild... not solid and dull like a grown-up stranger. More like another boy... He was a bit frightened, but he almost wanted to go back.”
“Spelling is a curious thing... it’s so often different from what you expect it to be. I used to think ‘please’ was spelled p-l-e-e-s, but it isn’t, you know; and you’d think ‘dear’ was spelled d-e-r-e, if you didn’t inquire. Sometimes it almost discourages you.”
Bill finds is so strange being a girl and everything is so different. He spends his day being forced to keep his dress clean but eventually it gets ruined.
“And now they’ve got to change their minds about the world. It’s different from what they’ve learned. It’s a world where humans take the first place. Human beings master them. They have to obey. Humans are the most important of all. But they’ll soon learn.”
“We made it a law here that every family shall go to a different restaurant every night of the month, around the village square in rotation. In this way no family of Krakatoa has to work more than once every twenty days, and every family is assured a great variety of food.”
“She noticed immediately that they were now in an altogether paler country. The sun had disappeared above a film of vapor. The air was becoming cooler every minute. The land was flat and treeless and there seemed to be no color in it at all. Every minute, the mist became thicker. The air became colder still and everything became paler and paler until soon there was nothing but grey and white all around them. They were in a country of swirling mists and ghostly vapors. There was some sort of grass underfoot but it was not green. It was ashy grey.”
“We are in Transylvania; and Transylvania is not England. Our ways are not your ways, and there shall be to you many strange things. Nay, from what you have told me of your experiences already, you know something of what strange things there may be.”
“Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is, Who in the world am I?”