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But you don’t know what it is to store up a whole lot of details and then come upon something real.’
‘There are those who know and those who don’t know. And for every ten thousand who don’t know there’s only one who knows. That’s the miracle of all time—the fact that these millions know so much but don’t know this.
‘For this afternoon,’ he said. ‘The motto has been: Go out and find an octopus and put socks on it.’
‘The Negro race of its own accord climbs up on the cross on every Friday,’ said Doctor Copeland.
That was the realest part of all the summer—her listening to this music on the radio and studying about it.
It was like she was so empty there wasn’t even a feeling or thought in her.
Wonderful music like this was the worst hurt there could be. The whole world was this symphony, and there was not enough of her to listen.
Why hadn’t the explorers known by looking at the sky that the world was round? The sky was curved, like the inside of a huge glass ball, very dark blue with the sprinkles of bright stars.
Why was it that in cases of real love the one who is left does not more often follow the beloved by suicide? Only because the living must bury the dead? Because of the measured rites that must be fulfilled after a death? Because it is as though the one who is left steps for a time upon a stage and each second swells to an unlimited amount of time and he is watched by many eyes? Because there is a function he must carry out? Or perhaps, when there is love, the widowed must stay for the resurrection of the beloved—so that the one who has gone is not really dead, but grows and is created for a
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‘You know it’s like I got to wear blinders all the time so I won’t think sideways or in the past.
And on that subject why was it that the smartest people mostly missed that point? By nature all people are of both sexes. So that marriage and the bed is not all by any means. The proof? Real youth and old age. Because often old men’s voices grow high and reedy and they take on a mincing walk. And old women sometimes grow fat and their voices get rough and deep and they grow dark little mustaches.
Us has always been like three-piece twinses.’
‘But hold up your shoulders, Daughter. Your carriage is bad.’
The hopeless suffering of his people made in him a madness, a wild and evil feeling of destruction. At times he drank strong liquor and beat his head against the floor. In his heart there was a savage violence,
But say a man does know. He sees the world as it is and he looks back thousands of years to see how it all come about. He watches the slow agglutination of capital and power and he sees its pinnacle today. He sees America as a crazy house. He sees how men have to rob their brothers in order to live. He sees children starving and women working sixty hours a week to get to eat. He sees a whole damn army of unemployed and billions of dollars and thousands of miles of land wasted. He sees war coming. He sees how when people suffer just so much they get mean and ugly and something dies in them. But
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Take Jesus. He was one of us. He knew. When He said that it is harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God—He damn well meant just what He said. But look what the Church has done to Jesus during the last two thousand years. What they have made of Him. How they have turned every word He spoke for their own vile ends. Jesus would be framed and in jail if He was living today.
They have made the word freedom a blasphemy. You hear me? They have made the word freedom stink like a skunk to all who know.’
Being mad is no good. Nothing we can do is any good. That’s the way it seems to me. All we can do is go around telling the truth. And as soon as enough of the don’t-knows have learned the truth then there won’t be any use for fighting. The only thing for us to do is let them know. All that’s needed. But how?
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”’
‘What is the value of any piece of property, of any merchandise we buy in a store? The value depends only on one thing—and that is the work it took to make or to raise this article.
From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” All of us here know what it is to suffer for real need. That is a great injustice. But there is one injustice bitterer even than that—to be denied the right to work according to one’s ability. To labor a lifetime uselessly. To be denied the chance to serve. It is far better for the profits of our purse to be taken from us than to be robbed of the riches of our minds and souls.
This year seemed neither long nor short. Rather it was removed from the ordinary sense of time—as when one is drunk or half-asleep.
he knew what each one of them would say before he began, because the meaning was always the same.
Each person addressed his words mainly to the mute. Their thoughts seemed to converge in him as the spokes of a wheel lead to the center hub.
Those words in their heart do not let them rest, so they are always very busy.
Each man described the mute as he wished him to be.
Owing to the fact he was a mute they were able to give him all the qualities they wanted him to have.
‘That ain’t no Christian way to talk,’ Portia said. ‘Us can just rest back and know they going to be chopped up with pitchforks and fried everlasting by Satan.’
All white people looked similar to Negroes but Negroes took care to differentiate between them. On the other hand, all Negroes looked similar to white men but white men did not usually bother to fix the face of a Negro in their minds.
‘All I can say is this: The world is full of meanness and evil.
‘But once you enter this it must be all. First and foremost. Your work now and forever. You must give of your whole self without stint, without hope of personal return, without rest or hope of rest.’ ‘For the rights of the Negro in the South.’ ‘In the South and here in this very county. And it must be either all or nothing. Either yes or no.’
That was the way things were. It was like she was mad all the time. Not how a kid gets mad quick so that soon it is all over—but in another way. Only there was nothing to be mad at.
The title of the book comes from a poem by William Sharp, with the lines “But my heart is a lonely hunter that hunts / On a lonely hill.”
