Jo Sinclair Quotes

They started off the porch, and [she] felt the poems moving with her into the street, like a singing. (p309)

...How could anything as delicate as love turn into the harsh accusation of [his] eyes? (book 3 chapter 11)

The same liquor, the same scar tissue, the same fear-sound of [his] cough flying into the Ballroom: for [her], everything had seemed reiteration out of the ghostly series of yesterdays. Only she was different. Everything seemed blurred and unformed wood, only she chiseled out into actuality, the need of body, the lips shaped to the sound of longing.( p261)

It was Saturday again. Today he was eager to be here. Already he shared with the walls of this office the intimacy of secrets released, the wonderful freedom of shame and pain eased, even the inch of secret, the first few stumbling steps of ease. (Chapter Three, p77)

All that summer, as no white people came to rent the empty, upstairs suites of the Valenti house or the Golden house, tension had mounted in the street. Only Negroes came. (first lines)

The big desk was somewhat like a bridge between the doctor and him; at one end the doctor sat, and here at this end he sat, waiting for the moment when he could take a few further awkward steps upon that bridge into understanding, into reasoning. (Chapter Three, p77)

You remember how that word echoed and echoed inside of you all the way home...All the way home, the word said itself in you like a squeezing fist. (Chapter Nine, p299)

The evening became more and more tender, as if [she] were holding the glass bowl of the Ballroom between her palms and watching it fill slowly with all the nostalgia and sadness, the yearning prolonged embraces, of a farewell. (book 3 chapter 11)

"...Do you have anything definite on which to pin your dislike? Or is it a cloak for your dislike of someone else? Or perhaps yourself?" (Chapter Five, p159)

She saw his dreamer eyes; the dream was love, togetherness, two people together.
She saw his whole dreamer self, and she called his name. (p297)

The walls of Saturday moved in on him with a combined pressure of fear and relief, the walls of a confessional. And yet these walls were different, too, pressing as they did ever closer toward him. (Chapter Six, p195)

Many of the passengers could not help staring at Anna Teller. It was mid-December of 1956; all the newspapers they had brought onboard were still headlining one story, and here was part of the story in the flesh.

The word Depression faded from the American air, but in her it would never fade completely, she knew that. (chapter Five, p177)

For a second of intense hurt, she remembered all the fires, all the joy of those yesterdays which had merged so quickly. There had never been a calendar to life; excitement and fun had been timeless. Every day had been the present, fast and dangerous, the never-ending moment of leadership. (chapter 8, p127)

How fast the evening had passed, with its newnesses boxed one within the next like constantly opening flashes of excitement. (book 3 chapter 5)