Significant sentences from book three THE JUDGES

• For time and eternity there have been fathers like Nathan who simply can see no way to have a daughter but to own her like a plot of land. Orleanna, pg 191.
• Jackson, Mississippi, in the Great Depression wasn't so different from the Congo thirty years later, except that in Jackson we knew of some that had plenty and I guess that did make us restless from time to time. Orleanna, pg 192.
• I accepted the Lord as my personal Saviour, for He finally brought me a Maytag washer. Orleanna, pg 201.
• Whenever you have plenty of something, you have to share it with the fyata, she said. (And Mama Mwanza is not even Christian!) Really you know things are bad when a woman without any legs and who recently lost two of her own kids feel sorry for you. Leah, pg 207.
• He clocked his tongue the way Mama Tataba used to, and told me, "Leba, the gods you do not pay are the ones that curse you best."
• The things we do not know, independently and in unison as a family, would fill two separate baskets, each with a large hole in the bottom." Adah, pg 209.
• He went away on the airplane abd I said, "Mama, I hope he never comes back." We cried then. Ruth May, pg 215.
• Our childhood had passed over into history overnight. Adah, pg 218.
• "God works, as is very well known, in mysterious ways." Adah, pg 217.
• "And I will bake the bread. Mother will show me how," Rachel announced, as if that finally solved all our troubles. Adah, pg 221.
• That is surely childhood's end, when you look at a think like a rabbit needing skinned and have to say: "Nobody else is going to do this."Leah, pg 235.
• He said now if anything happens to me, if I start fixing to die or something, hold on to this tight and bambula! Ruth May will disappear. Ruth May, pg 239.
• She looked like Cindarella in reverse, stepped out from her life at the ball for a day of misery among ashes." Leah, pg 242.
• They really were leaving, but Mother seemed just plain desperate to keep the conversation going. Rachel, pg 257.
• And August brough tus no pleasant dreams at all. Adah, pg 259.
• But up until day 5 - and ever afterward, on the whole - Our Father was delighted with this new attentionfrom the chief. The Reverend cockadoodled about the house, did he. Adah, pg 260.
• Nelson, as usual, was the one who finally took pity upon our benighted stupidity and told us what was up: kukwela. Tata Ndu wanted a wife. Adah, pg 262.
• To the Congolese (including Anatole himself, he confessed) it seems odd that if one man gets fifty votes and the other gets forty-nine, the first one wins altogether and the second on plumb loses. That means almost half the people will be unhappy, and according to Anatole, in a village that's left halfway unhappy you havent heard the end of it. There is sure to be trouble somewhere down the line. Leah, pg 265.
• My family is thinking og everything but my personal safety. The instants we get back to Georgia I am filing for an adoption. Rachel, 268.
• And if that wasn't already the living end, now my knight in shining armor has arrive: Mr. Stinkpot Axelroot. Rachel, pg 268.
• Who is real Rachel Price? But I won't tell her. I prefer to remain anomalous. Rachel, pg 270.
• He told Father Rachel would have to have the circus mission where they cut her so she wouldn't want to run around with people's husbands. Ruth May, pg 271.
• Father says white people have to stick together now so we have to be Mr. Axelroot's friend. But I don't want to. When we were waiting in the airplane, he put his hands on me hard. Ruth May, pg 273.
• SEVENTEEN! I am now one score and seven years old. Or so I thought, until Leah informed me that means twenty-seven. If God really auns to punish you, you'll know it when He send you not one but two sisters who are younger than you but already have memorized the entire dictionary. I just thank heavens that only on of them talks. Rachel, pg 274.
• "TATA JESUS IN BANGALA!" declares the Reverend every Sunday. Bangala means something precious and dear. But the way he pronounces it, it means the poisonwood tree. Adah, pg 276.
• My hunt-gooddess twin and I are now more distant kin than ever, I suppose, except in this one regard: she is beginning to be looked upon in out village as bizarre. Adah, pg 278.
• Most of all I want to ask Anatole this one unaskable question: Does he hate me for being white? Leah, pg 279.
• "My father thinks the Congo is just lagging behind and he van help bring it up to snuff. Which is crazy. It's like he's trying to put rubber tires on a horse."Leah, pg 284.
• So we strolled out into the unbearable heat of August twenty-first, Nineteen-thousand-and-sixty. Rachel, pg 288.
• Benduka is the bent-sideways girl who walks slowly, but benduka is also the name of a fast-flying bird, the swallow with curved whings who darts crookedly quick through trees near water.  Adah, pg 295.
• How could I leave Adah behind again?Once in the womb, once to the lion, and now like Simon Peter I had denied her for the third time. Leah, pg 300.
• I THOUGHT I HAD DIED and gone to hell. But it's worse then that - I'm alive in hell. Rachel, pg 301
• It hurt, the little ants were biting us all over bad and it burnde. That time Leah fed one to the ant lion, Jesus saw that. Now his friends are all coming back to eat us up. Ruth May, pg 303.
• That night marks my life's dark center, the moment when growing up ended and the long downward slope toward death began. Adah, pg 306.
• The night felt like a dream rushing past me too fast, like a stream of flood, and in this uncontrollable dream Anatole was the one person who cared enough to help me. Leah, pg 308.
• This is what I must have learned, the night God turned his back on me: how to foretell the future in chicken bones. Leah, pg 311.