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I do realize that there is a fine bit of irony in the architecture of oppression granting me a measure of peace, but keep in mind I was not always the woman awoken to the dynamics of power I became during my tenure at Miss Preston’s.
Folks are, at their heart, selfish, and anything they tell you is more often than not designed to meet their own goals. I know, because I ain’t any different.
But the problem about starting a new life is you bring your old self with you.
“it will be okay. There is no need to cry. This is a trial of your own making, one many of us will surely endure, sooner or later. We are, so often, our own worst enemies.”
But when I am dressed and looking my best, I feel like I actually have power over something. And even the smallest feeling of security is a comfort in a brutal, unforgiving world.
How does one go on when they’ve lost their heart? By being heartless.
It’s like watching someone try to reason with the dead: dangerous and an absolute waste of time.
He doesn’t understand that sometimes it takes a bold solution to solve a problem, one folks ain’t expecting.
It is monstrous, and yet another reminder that the dead are not the only threat in this world.
We have all lost someone we have loved. It is practically the only guarantee in this terrible world.
Killing the dead is not easy. It is the hardest thing you will ever do. Not physically, though swinging a blade hard enough to sever a neck is no cakewalk. But because it takes a piece of your soul. No matter what you tell yourself, you know those folks were once just like you. They loved and fought and did all the messy parts of living you and I do.
We can fight together or we can die alone.
“Sometimes, when the world doesn’t make sense, it’s easier to pretend like there are other forces at work. But there ain’t. That’s just life.”
The mayor talks like we are old friends, and I lean back on my bunk, because I learned long ago that you should never trust a man who treats you like a longtime friend.
I suppose when lines are drawn it is easier to go with what one knows than to forge new paths.
She looks like an omen, a dark personification of the grim reaper, beautiful and relentless.
I’ve been living so long for the future that I haven’t been focusing on the now. And I ain’t sure I know how to change that.
“It’s the American way,” she would say, watching from the porch as another family took up residence at Rose Hill. “You help as much as you can—but no more. You don’t think those founding fathers wrote all those pretty words about independence just to help the poor, do you? The books are right there in the library, Jane. They did it because they didn’t want to pay taxes, to have some king tell them the price of tea. And for that, they went to war, and hundreds of people died. If that ain’t capitalism, I don’t know what is.”
I love my momma, and I surely trust her more than I do any founding fathers I’ve never met. But I have to believe there’s more to life than just surviving.
“Mr. Carr, you may be a genius, but you have very little common sense. I hope you live long enough to regret this.”
He is trying to protect me, in the simple way men are always trying to protect women: by stealing away their freedom.
“Darling, disappointment is the only sure thing in this world.”
How can we make the world a better place if we are always at odds with one another for every single kind of reason under the sun?
This world may hate the Negro, but that is who I am. I do not care about the story my skin tells. I am a colored woman, and I will not let them make me hate myself.
I guess falling for someone always is. It’s the staying in love that’s hard.
Sometimes the people we love fiercest leave the world like a whisper.
