But my mother wanted her children to be educated by nuns and priests all dressed in black, the way it had been done down through the generations with her people. Taught by people who had a firm grasp...
We leave, we run away and don't realize how much we'll need to go back home one day. The South is like that. It's the worst mama in the world and it's the best mama in the world.
They treat colored people like kings and queens in Washington, cause thas where the president lives. Would they treat colored people anything but good in a city where the president hangs his hat and p...
People seem to have trouble with the imagination. They can't believe that you can just pull things out of your brain like that.
(Her husband's departure ...) had picked Mildred up by the hair and dropped her down at the doorstep of insanity.From "Butterfly on F street
The wonderful thing about writers like [James] Baldwin is the way we read them and come across passages that are so arresting we become breathless and have to raise our eyes from the page to keep from...
We are all worthy of one another.
As for the absence of recovery, as for death, there are machines that are not meant for the road.
People, I have learned, have a way of taking root in one's still-developing mind without our knowing it, especially people, like [James] Baldwin, who live in the world of words.
It mattered not how long he had wandered in the wilderness, how long they had kept him in chains, how long he had helped them and kept himself in his own chains; none of that mattered now. He patted t...
God is in his heaven and he don't care most of the time. The trick of life is to know when God does care and do all you need to do behind his back.
What we need is a new God. Somebody who knows what the fuck he's doing.
Calvin had said, his hands hard at his sides.
Calvin had long been uneasy in his own person and so lived to put everyone else at ease.
Henry had been a good master, his widow decided, as good as they come. Yes, he sometimes had to ration the food he gave them. But that was not his fault—had God sent down more food, Henry would certai...
Render your body to them his father had taught, but know your soul belongs to God.
But where, in all she taught her son, was it about thou shall own no one, havin been owned once your own self. Don’t go back to Egypt after God done took you outa there.
A woman, no matter the age, is always learning, always becoming. But a man . . . stops learning at fourteen or so.
You too heavy a man for me to carry...I done carried heavy men and I know how they can break your back. I ain’t got but this one back and I don’t want it broke again...
Celeste was practically talking to herself now because Stamford and the baby were in a world of their own. The baby's hands had reached the man's face and he was tapping every feature of it, doing eve...
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