The Poisonwood Bible Quotes by Chapter

We aimed for no more than to have dominion over every creature that moved upon the earth. (1.Prologue.16)

My father [...] was bringing the Word of God — which fortunately weighs nothing at all. (1.1.21)

Rex Minton said we better not go to the Congo on account of the cannibal natives would boil us in a pot and eat us up. (1.2.6)

I detest the part [of the Bible] where Lot offered his own virgin daughters to the rabble of sinners. [...] What kind of a trade is that? And his poor wife, of course, got turned to a pillar of sal...

She grew strong as I grew weak. (Yes! Jesus loves me!) And so it came to pass, in the Eden of our mother's womb, I was cannibalized by my sister. (1.4.14)

Women are expected to wear just the one style of garment and no other. But the men, now that is a course of a different color. (1.5.2)

Bosoms may wave in the breeze, mind you, but legs must be strictly hidden, top secret. (1.6.2)

"Where you'd be wearing out the knees of your trousers, sir, they just have to go ahead and wear out their knees!" (1.7.16)

"Sending a girl to college is like pouring water in your shoes. [...] It's hard to say which is worse, seeing it run out and waste the water, or seeing it hold in and wreck the shoes." (1.8.7)

If God had amused himself inventing the lilies of the field, he surely knocked His own socks off with the African parasites. (1.10.37)

Fufu nsala, Mama Tatabla called us. [...] A forest-dwelling, red-headed rat that runs from sunlight. (2.Prologue.21)

I'm fifteen and must think about maturing into a Christian lady. (2.1.6)

I was glad nobody wanted to cut off my hands. Because Jesus made me white, I reckon they wouldn't. (2.2.29)

"Tata Ndu feels that bringing the Christian word to these people is leading them to corrupt ways." (2.3.21)

I wonder that religion can live or die on the strength of a faint, stirring breeze. [...] One god draws in the breath of life and rises; another god expires. (2.4.23)

My father says a girl who fails to marry is veering from God's plan—that's what he's got against college. (2.5.20)

Mrs. Underdown tried to make friends with Mother by complaining about her houseboy. [...] "Honestly, Orleanna, he would steal everything except the children." (2.7.4)

According to my Baptist Sunday-school teacher, a child is denied entrance to heaven merely for being born in the Congo. (2.8.4)

Mr. Patrice will be the Prime Minister of the Congo now and it won't be the Belgian Congo anymore, it will be the Republic of Congo. And do you think anybody in this hip town we live in is actually...

Leopoldville [has] nice paved streets for the whites, and surrounding it, for miles and miles, nothing but dusty run-down shacks for the Congolese. [...] Americans would never stand for this kind o...

If [Nathan's] guilt made him a tyrant before men, it made him like a child before his God. (3.Prologue.28)

I added "Baka veh." This means, "We don't pay for that," which is how you say that you don't believe. (3.1.12)

It troubled Leah that people thought our household deficient [...] because we lacked a bákala mpandi—a strong man—to oversee us. (3.4.8)

Congolese men didn't treat their own wives and daughters as if they were very sensible or important. Though as far as I could see the wives and daughters did just about all the work. (3.5.53)

For Father, the Kingdom of the Lord is an uncomplicated place, where tall, handsome boys fight on the side that always wins. (3.7.21)

"[The Bible is] God's word, brought to you by a crew of romantic idealists in a harsh desert culture eons ago, followed by a chain of translators two thousand years ago." (3.8.18)

"[Tata Ndu] can help your family by paying Tata Price some ivory and five or six goats and maybe a little bit of cash to take [Rachel] out of his house." (3.9.18)

Rachel would have to have the circus mission where they cut her so she wouldn't want to run around with people's husbands. (3.12.4)

"Tata Jesus is bangala!" declares the Reverend every Sunday. […] Bangala means something precious and dear. But the way he pronounces it, it means the poisonwood tree. Praise the Lord, hallelujah...

"Secretly, most [Congolese] believe white people know how to turn the sun on and off and make the river flow backward. [...] They think you represent a greedy nation." (3.15.13, 3.15.15)

In the eyes of our Lord Jesus Christ [every death matters]. Even the sparrows that fall out of their nest and what not. (3.16.33)

How could I leave Adah behind again? Once in the womb, once to the lion, and now like Simon Peter I had denied her for the third time. (3.18.10)

"Don't try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you are good, bad things can still happen. And if you are bad, you can still be lucky...

You can curse the dead or pray for them, but don't expect them to do a thing for you. They're far too interested in watching us, to see what in heaven's name we will do next. (4.Prologue.24)

"We are making a vote for Jesus Christ in the office of personal God, Kilanga village." (4.1.19)

In our village, believe you me, people die for the slightest provocation so there are not that many old people still hanging around. (4.2.7)

A drum gives nommo in Congo, where drums have language. (4.3.2)

Nelson had ridiculed Gbenye's aim by calling him nkento. A woman. (4.4.8)

I wanted to live under the safe protection of somebody who wore decent clothes, bought meat from the grocery store like the Good Lord intended, and cared about others. (4.5.5)

I shook [Ruth May] too hard and screamed at her. Maybe that was the last she knew of her sister Leah. (4.9.5)

I was not present at Ruth May's birth but I have seen it now, because I saw each step of it played out in reverse at the end of her life. The closing parenthesis. [...] Now she will wait the rest o...

When a government comes crashing down, it crushes those who were living under its roof. (5.Prologue.8)

Why, Ruth May is no longer with us! It seemed very simple. We were walking along this road, and she wasn't with us. (5.1.5)

I continued to stare at the traffic light, which glowed red. Suddenly a green arrow popped on, pointing left, and the row of cars like obedient animals all went left. I laughed out loud. (5.3.19)

I live among men and women who've simply always understood their whole existence is worth less than a banana to white people. I see it in their eyes when they glance up at me. (5.6.34)

When I go with them to the grocery, [Anatole and Leah] are boggled and frightened and secretly scornful. [...] It is as if our Rachel had been left suddenly in charge of everything. (5.7.6)

I've heard foreign visitors complain that the Congolese are greedy, naive, and inefficient. They have no idea. The Congolese are skilled at survival and perceptive beyond belief or else dead at an...

Most of America is perfectly devoid of smells. [...]Even in the grocery store, surrounded in one aisle by more kinds of food than will ever be known in a Congolese lifetime, there was nothing on th...

You would be free too. And I didn't want that. I wanted you to remember what he did to us. (5.12.48)

With no men around, everyone was surprisingly lighthearted. (6.1.5)

There is not justice in this world. [...] This world has brought one vile abomination after another down on the heads of the gentle, and I'll not live to see the meek inherit anything. (6.2.26)

In organic chemistry, invertebrate zoology, and the inspired symmetry of Mendelian genetics, I [Adah] have found a religion that serves. (6.3.12)

Being dead is not worse than being alive. It is different, though. You could say the view is larger. (7.1.7)