- [first lines]
- Nana Peazant: I am the first and the last. I am the honored one and the scorned one. I am the whore and the holy one. I am the wife and the virgin. I am the barren one and many are my daughters. I am the silence that you can not understand. I am the utterance of my name.
- Eli Peazant: What're we supposed to remember, Nana? How, at one time, were we able to protect those we loved? How, in Africa world, we were kings and queens and built great big cities?
- Nana Peazant: Eli, I'm trying to teach you how to touch your own spirit. I'm fighting for my life, Eli, and I'm fighting for yours. Look in my face! I'm trying to give you something to take north with you, along with all your great big dreams.
- Nana Peazant: There must be a connection... We are two people in one body; nanas of the old and the force of the new.
- Viola Peazant: When I left this island, I was a sinner and I didn't even know it. But I left this island, touched over to the mainland, and fell into the arms of the Lord.
- Pezant child: What they got out there, Viola?
- Viola Peazant: Life, child, the beginning of a new life.
- Teenage girl: Who they out there?
- Viola Peazant: Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
- Older Cousin: Maybe when we go North, you can take more with you than Eula and your dreams.
- Eli Peazant: I ain't got no more dreams, cousin.
- Viola Peazant: They're not supposed to die. It ain't right! There supposed to die and go to heaven! It ain't right.