Julius Lester > Quotes

“History is not just facts and events. History is also a pain in the heart and we repeat history until we are able to make another’s pain in the heart our own.”
― Julius Lester

“How can I love you if I don't know what hurts you?”
― Julius Lester, The Autobiography of God

“History is not just facts and events. History is also a pain in the heart and we repeat history until we are able to make another's pain in the heart our own.”
― Julius Lester

“Silence was not the absence of sound but was itself a sound that could be loud or soft, soothing or disturbing, complex or simple.”
― Julius Lester, The Autobiography of God

“I'm tired of thinking and I'm really tired of Feeling.

—Jenna Richards”
― Julius Lester, When Dad Killed Mom

“But I want you around even when I don't need you.
—Jeremy Richards”
― Julius Lester, When Dad Killed Mom

“Just because she's dead it doesn't mean I stopped loving her or that she stopped loving me. It's just her body that left. The love didn't.

—Jenna Richards”
― Julius Lester, When Dad Killed Mom

“It ain't how long you know somebody that means anything. It's what that person mean to you in your heart.”
― Julius Lester, Day of Tears

“We remember with our emotions. The things that were important in our emotional life, that's what we remember.”
― Julius Lester, When Dad Killed Mom

“Goodness was not a trait you acquired; it was a value you practiced when you were on the verge of doing evil.”
― Julius Lester, The Autobiography of God

“Being a failure at living your own life as best as you can is better than being a success living the life somebody else says you should live.”
― Julius Lester, Guardian

“Some wounds go so deep that you don't even feel them until months, maybe years, later.”
― Julius Lester, When Dad Killed Mom

“If I canot know your name, may I light a lamp so I can see your face?'
If you sould ever see my face, you will lose me forever.'
Why?' Psyche wanted to know. 'Are you ugly? Are you afraid I won't love you if I see your face?'
Perhaps I am afraid that if you see my face, it will be THAT that you will love and not me.'
I understand, believe me. I know what that feels like.”
― Julius Lester, Cupid: A Tale of Love and Desire

“Dying ain't important. Everyone does that. What's important is how well you do your living.”
― Julius Lester

“But there are times when a tree can no longer withstand the pain inflicted on it, and the wind will take pity on that tree and topple it over in a mighty storm. All the other trees who witnessed the evil look down upon the fallen tree with envy. They pray for the day when a wind will end their suffering. I pray for the day when God will end mine.”
― Julius Lester, Guardian

“Love happened. Love came to show you that you could be more than you could ever imagine, because love forced you out of the narrows of yourself and thrust you into a vastness that stretched from one end of time to the other. Nothing mattered except being in the presence of love, the greatest beauty of all.”
― Julius Lester, Cupid: A Tale of Love and Desire

“....the racial divides in the United States will not be overcome until lynchings of all kinds are as painful to nonblacks as they are to blacks, until each of us become guardians of the sufferings history has bequeathed us.”
― Julius Lester, Guardian

“To give good hugs you have to have some soft places.
—Jeremy Richards”
― Julius Lester, When Dad Killed Mom

“There was an end to weeping. Mourning, however, ebbed and surged but never ceased flowing.”
― Julius Lester, The Autobiography of God

“What would they do if I said I hurt so much I feel like I want to die?

—Jeremy Richards”
― Julius Lester, When Dad Killed Mom

“I write because the lives of all of us are stories. If enough of those stories are told, then perhaps we will begin to see that our lives are the same story. The differences are merely in the details.”
― Julius Lester

“He took the box but did not avail himself of a tissue. She understood. Sometimes it was comforting to feel the wetness of grief's tears on your face.”
― Julius Lester, The Autobiography of God

“... the object of learning was not to build a better mousetrap but to ask a better question.”
― Julius Lester, The Autobiography of God

“Perhaps one of the writer's tasks is to weave himself into others' pain.”
― Julius Lester, When Dad Killed Mom

“While the subject matter is lynching, on a deeper level, this novel is about identity. Whom and what we identify ourselves with determines our characters, determines who we are, and what we do.”
― Julius Lester, Guardian

“Books, and especially fiction, do not proceed from ideas. They are born from feelings ”
― Julius Lester, When Dad Killed Mom

“The young accept the extraordinary as normal because they do not compare their lives with those of others when everyone is like them.”
― Julius Lester, The Autobiography of God

“I had not given a thought to what a difference it can make when you treat another person with simple respect and dignity, the same respect and dignity you want for yourself. That is so simple, yet so few seem able to do it.”
― Julius Lester, Day of Tears

“To write and not tell the truth? That would be death for any writer. But more, it would be death to the imagination. And if the imagination dies, what would happen to the souls of children?”
― Julius Lester

“Perhaps nothing is so wounding to a writer than being accused of having written something that hurts a child. Censorship is an attitude of mistrust and suspicion that seeks to deprive the human experience of mystery and complexity. But without mystery and complexity there is no wonder; there is no awe; there is no laughter.”
― Julius Lester, Places I Never Meant to Be: Original Stories by Censored Writers