How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
"Remember this. Your grandfather and brother are lying there, murdered not by one white man but by the curse which God put on the whole race before your grandfather or your brother or me or you were even though to. A race doomed and cursed to be forever a part of the white race's doom and curse for its sins." (11.20)
There's this religious idea running through the book that white people are cursed with black people, and forced to deal with them in order to clean themselves from sin. This idea is used by several characters in the novel to justify racism, including Doc Hines and Mr. Burden.
Quote #8
What was terrible was that she did not want to be saved. [...] She seemed to see her whole past life, the starved years, like a gray tunnel, at the far and irrevocable end of which, as unfading as a reproach, her naked breast of three short years ago ached as though in agony, virgin and crucified; "Not yet, dear God. Not yet, dear God." (12.11)
Miss Burden struggles with religion here, seeming to know that if she accepts the idea of damnation, she won't be able to enjoy life (or sex) nearly as much!