If niggers were supposed to have their freedom, they wouldn't be in chains. If the red man was supposed to keep hold of his land, it'd still be his. If the white man wasn't destined to take this new w...
And America, too, is a delusion, the grandest one of all. The white race believes--believes with all its heart--that it is their right to take the land. To kill Indians. Make war. Enslave their brothe...
The first time Caesar approached Cora about running north, she said no.
Sometimes a workweek will grind you into sand, pulverize you into particles.
How's that training coming along, Griff? Good old Max says you're a natural.Turner frowned. Any time a white man asked you about yourself, they were about to fuck you over.
People get rid of plenty when they move--sometimes they're changing not just places but personalities.
As it often did when I thought about chicken wings and entropy, my mind turned to Emerson. Life is a journey, not a destination. Now that was one stone-cold motherfucker who was not afraid to deliver...
I'd never been much of an athlete, due to a physical condition I'd had since birth (unathleticism). Perhaps if there were a sport centered around lying on your couch in a neurotic stupor all day, I'd...
I'm what the botanists call a hybrid, he said the first time Cora heard him speak, A mixture of two different families. In flowers, such a concoction pleases the eye. When that amalgamation takes its...
You swallow hard when you discover that the old coffee shop is now a chain pharmacy, that the place where you first kissed so-and-so is now a discount electronics retailer, that where you bought this...
The iron horse still rumbled through the tunnel when she woke. Lumbly's words returned to her: If you want to see what this nation is all about, you have to ride the rails. Look outside as you speed t...
The doctor was a frequent visitor at Miss Trumball's establishment, preferring it to the Lanchester house, whose girls had a saturnine disposition in his opinion, as if imported from Maine or other gl...
He had met this sort of white man before, earnest and believing what came out of their mouths. The veracity of their words was another matter, but at least they believed them. The southern white man w...
What a world it is, Cora thought, that makes a living prison into your only haven. Was she out of bondage or in its web: how to describe the status of a runaway?
Turner had never met a kid like Elwood before. was the word he returned to, even though the Tallahassee boy looked soft, conducted himself like a goody-goody, and had an irritating tendency to preach...
The girl’s vulgarities reminded Cora of the plantation and the stream of oaths delivered by the hands when master’s eye was not on them. The small rebellion of servants everywhere.
The other patrollers were boys and men of bad character; the work attracted a type. In another country they would have been criminals, but this was America.
Resentment was the hinge of her personality.
Pain could be killed. Sadness could not, but the drugs did shut its mouth for a time.
Elwood said, It's against the law. State law, but also Elwood's. If everyone looked the other way, then everybody was in on it. If he looked the other way, he was as implicated as the rest. That's how...
