- Kirky: Hell, boy, that ain't no signature. That's an X.
- Booker Savage: How old's a man gotta be, 'for you people stop calling him "boy"? Now, if it's my signature you want, as you call it, that's it. Take it or leave it.
- Miss McClintock: What you think and what I know are miles apart. Now, you got a C and a C it will stay. And that brings me to another point, I was going through your records yesterday and I was amazed to notice that you signed up for a college preparatory course.
- Newt: That's right. I plan on going to college.
- Miss McClintock: Are you serious?
- Newt: Yes.
- Miss McClintock: Well let me tell you something, very few negro students go to college. They just aren't college material and the few who do go, wind up as cooks and porters in any case . Now, I just think that's an awful waste of money and time.
- Newt: That's not gonna happen to me whether I go to college or not.
- Miss McClintock: Now, Newton don't get upset. I'm here to advise you and I advise you to take a general course. It'll be much easier for you and wiser for you.
- Newt: You just hate us colored kids don't you!
- Pastor Broadnap: Deliver our young from cigarettes, from dancing, from drinking, from lipstick and flapper skirts. Yes, Lord, deliver us from all evil.
- Marcus: Well, fellas, ain't that somethin'. Winger's stickin' up for the poor white trash, a peckerwood, over one of his own gang.
- Newt: Is there a heaven?
- Sarah: I don't rightly know, Newt. Maybe they ain't no hell, either. I believe God made us and expects us to do good here on earth. Can't say God's his real name. All my life I've been told about a better world somewhere beyond this one. It's awful hard at this late date not to believe.
- Newt: I'm gonna hate dyin'.
- Sarah: None of us will like it, son. The important thing is to be ready when the time comes.
- Newt: You mean, be a Christian?
- Sarah: In a way, but, there's more to it than that. It's bein' able to love when you feel like hatin' and to tell the truth when you feel like lyin'.
- Judge Cavanaugh: Marcus, this thing you did to Mr. Kiner, brought disgrace to your people and to our town.
- Marcus: I ain't got no people. this town don't want me and I don't want this town.
- Newt: Are we gonna live here all our lives?
- Sarah: Don't you like it here son?
- Newt: I don't know. I ain't been no place else.
- Sarah: Well I hope you won't have to live here all your life. It's not all good place, not all bad place either. Sort of like food on a tree: some good, some bad. Understand? No matter if you go a stay, think of Cherokee Flats like that till the day you die. Let it be a Learning Tree
- Judge Cavanaugh: I have just committed you to Spitz Reformatory for six months. I hope, for your sake, that you can rid yourself of this evil in you before you come back. Because if you don't, you're going to rot in jails for the rest of your life.
- Marcus: I ain't rottin' nowhere but in my grave.
- Booker Savage: Boy. Boy? That's all those people know. They'd call Jesus Christ "boy" if he was black. I sure hate the sight of a white man.
- Chappie Logan: Now, I want two towels under every pillow, in every room.
- Marcus: Is this here a whorehouse?
- Chappie Logan: With talk like that, you won't be around here long, boy. Just change the beds, sweep the floor, and mind your own business.
- Uncle Rob: Newt, I've been blind for 30 years. I don't know what color people are anymore. If somebody does something, good or bad, I don't think his color into it. I figure his deed.
- Newt: Do you remember what it was like before the explosion? What color the sky was? Things like that.
- Uncle Rob: Oh, at times, at times, yes. Sometimes the colors do come - and I think they're much brighter in my darkness, than in your light. I see blue and green and yellow - coming and going in all directions. They seemed soft, black. Ah, it's strange. I don't remember white at all. But, sometimes I have a little fun. Like, imagining you were green with pink ears, blue nose, purple hair. Oh, sometimes I fill my world with all kinds of colors.
- Newt: Really, Uncle Rob?
- Uncle Rob: That's right, boy, and I think sometimes if all the people in the world were made up of colors, instead of just black and white, it would be happy world. A wonderful world all mixed up with wonderful colored people. Nobody being the same as anybody else.
- Chappie Logan: [singing] My baby's gone, My baby's gone, My baby's gone, My baby's gone, She didn't say where, She didn't say why, I'm so blue, I got to lay down and die...
- Marcus: I don't want no part of your poor white trash God. He ain't gonna do nothin' for me and he ain't gonna do nothin' for you - as long as you stay black. Why don't you tell crapper to stop beatin' on us nigger boys. Yeah, that's what he calls us: nigga, nigga, nigga! Tell 'em, crapper. Tell 'em what you're gonna do to me when they leave. Tell 'em.