The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row

by Anthony Ray Hinton

We also need to learn about human dignity, about human worth and value. We need to think about the fact that we are all more than the worst thing we have done.

But pain and tragedy and injustice happen—they happen to us all. I’d like to believe it’s what you choose to do after such an experience that matters the most—that truly changes your life forever.

There’s no sadder place to be in this world than a place where there’s no hope.

It was nothing less than a lynching—a legal lynching—but a lynching all the same.

When it seems like the whole world thinks you’re bad, it’s hard to hang on to your goodness.

I was born guilty. Black, poor, without a father most of my life, one of ten children—it was actually pretty amazing I had made it to the age of twenty-nine without a noose around my neck.

The good old boys had traded in their white robes for black robes, but it was still a lynching.

even when you are flat on your back on the ground, there is beauty if you look for it.

She just loved me the same way she had loved me for as long as I could remember—absolutely and unconditionally.