Everyday Use Home Quotes
How we cite our quotes: Paragraph
Quote #1
A yard like this is more comfortable than most people know. It is not just a yard. It is like an extended living room. When the hard clay is swept clean as a floor and the fine sand around the edges lined with tiny, irregular grooves, anyone can come and sit and look up into the elm tree and wait for the breezes that never come inside the house. (1)
Our narrator doesn't exactly live in a castle. But this description of her yard shows that she appreciates the simple pleasures the place has to offer.
Quote #2
How long ago was it that the other house burned? Ten, twelve years? Sometimes I can still hear the flames and feel Maggie's arms sticking to me, her hair smoking and her dress falling off her in little black papery flakes. Her eyes seemed stretched open, blazed open by the flames reflected in them. (10)
With smoking hair, disappearing clothes, and distorted eyes, Maggie looks like something straight out of a horror movie. Of all the ways the narrator could've told us about the fire that destroyed her house, she chooses to tell it like this. What's the effect of telling us about the fire this way?
Quote #3
And Dee. I see her standing off under the sweet gum tree she used to dig gum out of; a look of concentration on her face as she watched the last dingy gray board of the house fall in toward the red-hot brick chimney. Why don't you do a dance around the ashes? I'd wanted to ask her. She had hated the house that much. (10)
Living next to a tree that's basically a gumball machine—what's not to love? So what's Dee's problem with this house?
Quote #4
I have deliberately turned my back on the house. It is three rooms, just like the one that burned, except the roof is tin; they don't make shingle roofs anymore. There are no real windows, just some holes cut in the sides, like the portholes in a ship, but not round and not square, with rawhide holding the shutters up on the outside. This house is in a pasture, too, like the other one. (14)
Wow, ending up in a house that's a lot like your previous house that burned down must be a pretty weird, perhaps even painful, experience. Of course, the narrator and Maggie might not have had much choice in where they would live after the fire given their financial circumstances. But might there also be reasons they'd want to live in a house similar to their old one?
Quote #5
No doubt when Dee sees [the house] she will want to tear it down. (14)
According to our narrator, Dee sure gives a whole new meaning to the term home wrecker. Why would Dee want to tear the house down when it's not like the family can easily afford another one?
Quote #6
[Dee] wrote me once that no matter where we "choose" to live, she will manage to come see us. But she will never bring her friends. (14)
Two little punctuation marks can tell us oh so much. Why does the narrator put the word choose in quotation marks?
Quote #7
[Dee] stoops down quickly and lines up picture after picture of me sitting there in front of the house with Maggie cowering behind me. She never takes a shot without making sure the house is included. When a cow comes nibbling around the edge of the yard she snaps it and me and Maggie and the house. (22)
Hmmm… so it turns out our narrator was wrong that Dee would want to tear the house down. Au contraire—she thinks the place is actually the perfect backdrop for her Kodak moment. Why do you think it's so important for Dee to make sure that the house, in particular, is in these pictures?
Quote #8
Wangero, though, went on through the chitlins and corn bread, the greens and everything else. She talked a blue streak over the sweet potatoes. Everything delighted her. Even the fact that we still used the benches her daddy made for the table when we couldn't afford to buy chairs. (45)
The narrator's language subtly hints that Dee is someone who takes a lot from this home: she wolfs down food, talks a blue streak and demands everyone's attention, and starts setting her eye on the loot she wants. But she doesn't give back much (unless giving back includes insulting the people who live there, because she's awesome at that).
Quote #9
After dinner Dee (Wangero) went to the trunk at the foot of my bed and started rifling through it. Maggie hung back in the kitchen over the dishpan. Out came Wangero with two quilts. (55)
Geez, didn't Dee learn the word privacy at her fancy school? Dee's lack of respect for her mother's space especially plays up the contrast between her and the narrator. The narrator, we'll remember, seems to respect Dee's privacy so much that she doesn't even ask if she and Hakim-a-barber got married.