Cruelty is contagious in uncivilized communities.

Southern women often marry a man knowing that he is the father of many little slaves. They do not trouble themselves about it.

When they told me my new-born babe was a girl, my heart was heavier than it had ever been before. Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women.

If a slave is unwilling to go with his new master, he is whipped, or locked up in jail, until he consents to go, and promises not to run away during the year.

Until late in life, I was never quite good enough for my father, and I suppose that is part of what drives me even now, well after his death in 1992.

You are not just about death and disease.

Life is fragile: it thrives only in a narrow range of temperatures between freezing and boiling. How lucky that our planet is just the right distance from the sun: a little farther, and the death of the perpetual Antarctic winter - or worse - would prevail; a little closer, and the surface would truly fry anything that touched it.

If I love something, I wear it to death!