Joel Chandler Harris

"I dont keer wat you do wid me, Brer Fox, sezee, so you dont fling me in dat brier-patch. Roas me, Brer Fox sezee, but dont fling me in dat brier-patch, sezee."

"Ez soshubble ez a baskit er kittens."

"Youkn hide de fier, but wat you gwine do wid de smoke?"

"Once upon a time a Georgian printed a couple of books that attracted notice, but immediately it turned out that he was little more than an amanuensis for the local blacks--that his works were really the products, not of white Georgia, but of black Georgia. Writing afterward as a white man, he swiftly subsided into the fifth rank."

"Hungry rooster dont cackle wen he fine a wum."

"Licker talks mighty loud wen it gits loose from de jug."

"Lazy fokess stummucks dont git tired."

"Jay-bird dont rob his own nes."

"Brer Rabbit keep on axin im, en de Tar-Baby, she keep on sayin nothin, twel presenty Brer Rabbit draw back wid his fis, he did, en blip he tuck er side er de head. Right dars whar he broke his merlasses jug. His fis stuck, en he cant pull loose. De tar hilt im."

"I seem to see before me the smiling faces of thousands of children some young and fresh and some wearing the friendly marks of age. But all children at heart and not an unfriendly face among them. And while I’m trying hard to speak the right word, I seem to hear a voice lifted above the rest saying you have made some of us happy. And so I feel my heart fluttering and my lips trembling, and I have to bow silently and turn away and hurry back into the obscurity that fits me best."

"Tater-vine growin’ w’ile you sleep."

"The few contributions we have made to literature have not seemed to stem the tide of prejudice, nor have the efforts of Cable and Donelly changed the place in literature given to us by Mrs. Stowe, Joel Harris, Opie Reid. Nowhere do we find spread to the world’s gaze a work that portrays Afro-American life in its true likeness. Twenty-five years of freedom have furnished novel coloring and strange situations out of which to evolve a strong, vigorous sketch of Afro-American life at its best, and illustrate the genius which has dominated the rapid progress. The splendid mental and literary equipment of some of our finest scholars; the fragments of verse and prose of which we catch fleeting glimpses now and then, encourages the hope that from the race will yet come forth the masterpiece which, measured by the literature of the world, shall stamp its author a genius and at the same time elevate the Afro-American in literature."