«The flag that was the symbol of slavery on the high seas for a long time was not the Confederate battle flag, it was sadly the Stars and Stripes»

«Question everything. Every stripe, every star, every word spoken. Everything.»

«She had rouged her cheeks to a color otherwise seen only on specially ordered Pontiac Firebirds, and in her ears she wore two feathered appliances resembling surfcasting jigs especially appetizing to striped bass.»

«?The whitest white dipped in clinging dirt. Another summer has thrown its corpse on my floor. The streets have given birth to even more strangers. Rivers of urine stripe the sidewalks. It rained the other day and the only thing that occurred to me was it would wash the smell away for a few days. Tonight is the first hot night. Outside my window, the human noise factor is intense. It?s past midnight. They talk too much. They scream liquor-fueled idiot chatter. I pull away and close the door. I think about how it?s all going to play out. How much time people spend trying to get across to each other, trying to clear their names. Trying to overturn the charges brought against them. I have decided to tell them that it?s all true and not seek a fair trial. It?s the only way to be free. Stop trying to matter. I could get my body tattooed with air-colored ink and walk invisibly amongst them. I have heard people say that they felt closer to their parents after they have died. Maybe if I treat people as if they were dead, I could get along with them better. I want to be able to like living people somehow. As it is now, they?re I best coming through speakers or trapped between book covers. Here I go into the heat. Four months as a human anvil.?»

«For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps: / Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: / Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously: / Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.»

«And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe»

«But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.»

«I've got spots; I've got stripes, too.»

«Once you can accept the universe as being something expanding into an infinite nothing which is something, wearing stripes with plaid is easy.»

«Dollars! All their cares, hopes, joys, affections, virtues, and associations seemed to be melted down into dollars. Whatever the chance contributions that fell into the slow cauldron of their talk, they made the gruel thick and slab with dollars. Men were weighed by their dollars, measures were gauged by their dollars; life was auctioned, appraised, put up, and knocked down for its dollars. The next respectable thing to dollars was any venture having their attainment for its end. The more of that worthless ballast, honor and fair-dealing, which any man cast overboard from the ship of his Good Nature and Good Intent, the more ample stowage-room he had for dollars. Make commerce one huge lie and mighty theft. Deface the banner of the nation for an idle rag; pollute it star by star; and cut out stripe by stripe as from the arm of a degraded soldier. Do anything for dollars! What is a flag to them!»