Significant sentences from book four BEL AND THE SERPENT.

• The sting of a fly, the Congolese say, can launch the end of the world. How simply things begin. Orleanna, pg 317.
• That Sunday morning Tata Ndu himself sat on the front bench, Tata Ndu rarely darkened the door of the church, so this was clearly a sign, though who could say whether a good or a bad one. Leah, pg 328.
• My sister, little Miss The-Lord-Is-My-Shepherd, now thinks she is Robin Hood. Rachel, pg 335.
• It's just lucky for Father he never had any sons. He might have been forced to respect them. Rachel, pg 337.
• In that other long-ago place, America, I was a failed combination of too-weak body and overstrong will. But in Congo i am those things perfectly united: Adah. Adah, pg 343.
• Hunger of the body is altogether different from the shallow, daily hunger of the belly. Those who have known this kind of hunger cannot entirely love, ever again, those who have not. Adah, pg 345.
• I killed my first game, a beautiful tawny beast with curved horns and a black diagonal stripe across his flank: a young male impala...Even a playground bully will want his mother in the bitter end. Leah, pg 348.
• I stood and prayed to the Lord Jesus if he was listening to take ma home to Georgia, where I could sit down in a White Castle and order a hamburger without having to see its eyes roll back in its head and the blood come spurting out of its corpse. Rachel, pg 350.
• After the hunt ended there was supposed to be a celebration, but before the old men could drag their drums out under the tree and get the dancing started, it had already turned into a melee of screaming and fighting. Leah, pg 352.
• And so it came to pass that the normal, happy event of dividing food after a hunt became a war of insults and rage and starving bellies. Leah, pg 354.
• Someone could have remarked that it is Leah who wears pants in our family, which is true. Rachel, pg 356.
• Leah says in Congo there's only two ages of people: babies that have to be carried, and people that stand up and fend for themselves. No in-between phase, No sich thing as childhood. Sometimes I think she's right. Rachel, pg 358.
• Strange to say, if you do not stamp yourself with the wors exhilarated or terrified, those two things feel exactly the same in a body. Adah, pg 361.
• Nelson knelt too, putting his face close to hers. He opened his mouth to speak, to reassure her, I imagine, for he loved Ruth May. I know this. I've seen how he sings to her and protects her. Leah, pg 363.
• I was not present at Ruth May's birth but I have seen it now, because I saw each step of it played  out in reverse at the end of her life. Adah, pg 365.
• There's a strange moment in time, after something horrible happens, when you know it's true but you haven't told anyone yet. Rachel, pg 366.
• For once he had no words to instruct our minds and improve our souls, no parable that would turn Ruth May's death by snakebite into a lesson on the Glory of God. Leah, pg 368