The boys ate warily, trying not to be seen or heard, the cornbread sticking, the buttermilk gurgling, as it went down their gullets. - Katherine Anne Porter

...without disturbing the radiance which played and darted about the simple and lovely miracle of being two persons named Adam and Miranda, twenty four years old each, alive and on earth at the same moment: 'Are you in the mood for dancing?' and 'I'm always in the mood for dancing, Adam!' but there were things in the way, the day that ended with dancing was a long way to go.

I don’t think they are any more complicated than we are,” said David. “They tie a different set of knots, that’s all.” “That isn’t all, by any means,” said Jenny. “That is too simple.” David, hearing the thin edge in her voice, said no more, but reflected that no matter how he tried to explain his point of view to Jenny, about anything at all, he seemed always to go off at a tangent, or in a circle, or to get bogged down in a spot he had never meant to be in, as if Jenny’s mind refracted his thought instead of absorbing his meaning, or even his feelings about certain things — Indians, for example.

It is a simple truth that the human mind can face better the most oppressive government, the most rigid restrictions, than the awful prospect of a lawless, frontierless world. Freedom is a dangerous intoxicant and very few people can tolerate it in any quantity; it brings out the old raiding, oppressing, murderous instincts; the rage for revenge, for power, the lust for bloodshed. The longing for freedom takes the form of crushing the enemy- there is always the enemy!- into the earth; and where and who is the enemy if there is no visible establishment to attack, to destroy with blood and fire? Remember all that oratory when freedom is threatened again. Freedom, remember, is not the same as liberty.