"...I almost jumped right into their high service mumbo and told them what they were about - that would have been a sight, this skinny kid black as a clarinet wailing out a licorice tune right there on the light blue carpet aisle cutting off that organ with the fake pipes just as it wheezed into one of their wavery old hymns. But it would not have done a bit of good. When people are set to hear bad things, that is what they will hear." First Part, p. 4

"I got seven straight grades of all A in English, six in black schools that were harder than the white one, which nobody believes. The lunches were better at the colored schools too, but nobody buys that either." Ibid, p. 6

"...first time I ever cried about Bix, feeling like I had lost something and then feeling like I did...