- Roy Timberlake: What made you decide to become a lawyer?
- Parry Clay: Well, you see, it's like this, Miss Roy: a white boy, he can take most any kind of job and improve himself. Well, like in this store! Maybe he can get to be a clerk or a manager. But a colored boy, he can't do that. He can keep a job or he can lose a job. But he can't get any higher up. So he's got to figure out something he can do that no one can take away. And that's why I want to be a lawyer.
- Roy Timberlake: Why, Perry, that's wonderful. I had no idea. Minerva never told me.
- Parry Clay: Ma's afraid for a colored boy to have too much ambition.
- Asa Timberlake: In my day, we didn't talk much about happiness. If it came we were grateful for it. But we were brought up in the belief that there were other things more important; old-fogy fantastic notions such as duty and personal responsibility.
- Craig Fleming: [about to kiss Roy] I can't think when you're so close to me.
- Roy Timberlake: Then hold me closer; I don't want you to think.
- Stanley Timberlake: Craig, have dinner with me somewhere tonight. Please. I've got a reason.
- Craig Fleming: I don't think we better, Stanley.
- Stanley Timberlake: Why not? You're afraid, aren't you? Afraid of yourself. Afraid of what you might feel if you let yourself go. Why don't you admit the truth, Craig? You've never gotten over me and you never will. You'd like to put your arms around me right now, wouldn't you? You'd like to kiss me, wouldn't you?
- Stanley Timberlake: All right, so you're going to die! But you're an old man, you've lived your life--I haven't lived mine--mine's hardly begun. Think of *me*, Uncle! Think of what'll happen to *me* if you don't get me out of this. You're not even listening! You don't care what happens to me any more than the others. You'd *let* me go to prison. All you're thinking of is your own miserable life. Well, you can die for all I care! *Die!*