I love putting great quotes at the beginning of each chapter of a book… something to set the mood or illuminate a certain theme. It is something I started many years ago and I’m always on the look-out for something special that relates to the current project. I found this in Robert Browning’s poem “Parleyings with Charles Avison”:
“There is no truer truth obtainable by man than comes of music.”
I don’t know where it’ll go in Nothing But Love in God’s Water: The Influence of Black Sacred Music on the Civil Rights Movement, but it’ll go somewhere!
Epigraphs rock. My students’ writing typically improves, at least a little, when they begin to play with epigraphs. Great stuff.
I love that you are using quotes at the beg of your chapters. I love two novels that do that beautifully: Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees (where she states a fact about actual bees and their respective roles) and Like Water for Chocolate (where the author quotes a rather sultry recipe . . . for food) at the outset of each chapter.