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you just have to somehow fix your mind to get from one day to the next. If you think too far ahead, if you even try to think too far ahead, you’ll never make it.
true, such a simple yet powerful reminder
I guess it can’t be too often that two people can laugh and make love, too, make love because they are laughing, laugh because they’re making love. The love and the laughter come from the same place: but not many people go there.
The women have somehow managed to get it all together, to hold everything together.
It’s funny what you hold on to to get through terror when terror surrounds you.
Of course, I must say that I don’t think America is God’s gift to anybody—if it is, God’s days have got to be numbered.
And everything seemed connected—the street sounds, and Ray’s voice and his piano and my Daddy’s hand and my sister’s silhouette and the sounds and the lights coming from the kitchen. It was as though we were a picture, trapped in time: this had been happening for hundreds of years, people sitting in a room, waiting for dinner, and listening to the blues.
I liked him so much that no other boy was real to me.
His face was bigger than the world, his eyes deeper than the sun, more vast than the desert, all that had ever happened since time began was in his face.
😍😍😍
And he still had that funny smile on his face, like something wonderful had just happened to him and no one in the world knew anything about it yet, but him. But he would tell somebody soon, and it would be me.
A jukebox was playing Aretha’s “That’s Life.”
Fonny’s face opened in a way I’d never seen it open and that laugh of his came rumbling up from his balls, from their balls—I had certainly never seen him, anyway, in the world in which he moved.
interesting depiction about how men interact with other men
I had never seen the love and respect that men can have for each other.
They think that they feel locked out. The truth is that they sense themselves in the presence, so to speak, of a language which they cannot decipher and therefore cannot manipulate, and, however they make a thing about it, so far from being locked
out, are appalled by the apprehension that they are, in fact, forever locked in.
Only a man can see in the face of a woman th...
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interesting concept about being seen 😍😍
It is very much harder, and it takes much longer, for a man to grow up, and he could never do it at all without women. This is a mystery which can terrify and immobilize a woman, and it is always the key to her deepest distress.
She must watch and guide, but he must lead, and he will always appear to be giving far more of his real attention to his comrades than he is giving to her.
that is such an interesting idea about perception wow
that a woman is tremendously controlled by what the man’s imagination makes of her—literally, hour by hour,
let’s decenter men!
The truth is that dealing with the reality of men leaves a woman very little time, or need, for imagination.
I was too tired to cry. I was too tired to feel anything.
It was like nothing was happening in the world but us.
holding me with those eyes,
“It was a little bit like being hit by a truck”—he laughed again—“but it was the most beautiful thing that ever happened to me.”
black love really is an act of resistance. wow.
I’m only talking about my health. Don’t you care nothing about my health? And they’re chocolate covered—vitamins, I mean.”
LOL good lord 😭
we laughed a lot, like children,
Men are men, and sometimes they must be left alone. Especially if you have the sense to realize that if they’re locked in a room together, where they may not especially want to be, they are locked in because of their responsibility for the women outside.
“Take care of each other,” he said. “You going to find out that it’s more than a notion.”
love ain’t just love.
How is a man if he’s fighting to get out of prison?
The white man’s got to be the devil. He sure ain’t a man.
But you don’t know—the worst thing, man, the worst thing—is that they can make you so fucking scared. Scared, man. Scared.”
it’s SO true. historically, why shouldn’t black people be scared of white people? they’ve done so much to our kind and community that can easily make us feel scared. they like to say/act like they’re scared of us but what is it based on?? racism lmao. so pls! this is truly profound as i can relate.
Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On.”
We are together somewhere where no one can reach us, touch us, joined.
but sensing that something wonderful has happened to us, which means that wonderful things happen, and that maybe something wonderful will happen to him. It’s wonderful, anyway, to be able to help a person to have that feeling.
the best way to describe what laughing with your person feels like.
I don’t believe there’s a white man in this country, baby, who can even get his dick hard, without he hear some nigger moan.
“I don’t want to sound foolish. But, just remember, love brought you here. If you trusted love this far, don’t panic now.”
black love is SO powerful. it has carried us through A LOT and will continue to do so.
if worse comes to worst, and it’s always better to assume that it will—come to worst—then our tactic has to be to shatter the credibility of the state’s only witness.”
and his ass-hole rot, he want you to be worried about the money. That’s his whole game. But if we got to where we are without money, we can get further. I ain’t worried about they money—they ain’t got no right to it anyhow, they stole it from us—they ain’t never met nobody they didn’t lie to and steal from. Well, I can steal, too. And rob. How you think I raised my daughters? Shit.” But Frank is not Joseph. He stares down again, into his drink. “What you think is going to happen?” “What we make happen,” says Joseph—again, with resolution. “That’s easy to say,” says Frank. “Not if you mean it,”
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this expression of dual forms of masculinity in times of crisis is absolutely beautiful and telling. they both seem scared and insecure but know they both have something to offer
But I know some hustles and you know some hustles
that the degree of his concern for his client—or the fact that he had any genuine concern for his client at all—placed him at odds,
for a white person to be concerned about a black person will always be risky.
But Fonny was too real a
presence, and Hayward too proud a man for that.
this book deals with masculinity in the most interesting of themes and ways.
But the calendars were full—it would take about a thousand years to try all the people in the American prisons, but the Americans are optimistic and still hope for time—and sympathetic or merely intell...
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“This is the address. But I think that you will understand, almost as soon as you get where you are going, that the word ‘address’ has almost no meaning—it would be more honest to say: this is the neighborhood.”
What I most remember about him is that he didn’t make either of us feel self-conscious. We all laughed together.
I realized that I was black and that the crowded streets were white
I said, “That man—there—attacked me. Right in this store. Right now. Everybody saw it.” No one said a word.
“Tish,” says Fonny—very quietly; with a dreadful quietness. I almost know what he is going to say. “Yes?” “Don’t ever try to protect me again. Don’t do that.” I know I am saying the wrong thing: “But you were trying to protect me,”
damn 😭 it’s really like this — black people cant defend each other for each other //:
Thank God tomatoes spatter but do not ring.
I know what he is saying. I know he is right. I know I must not say anything. Thank God, he does not let go my hand.
as a physical touch girl THIS IS EVERYTHING.
I’m scared every time you out of my sight.
protective <3
