More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
God wasn’t here. This was the devil’s work. And the devil was a man.
Humility is not thinking less of yourself. It’s thinking of yourself less,’”
You’re a blood relative to a man who tortured Black boys and girls to death. If I was you, I’d be less concerned about me talking to your mama and more concerned what the fallout from that is going to be.”
“Treat people bad, bad comes back to you,” Titus murmured. It was one of his mother’s favorite, most prescient sayings.
It occurred to him no place was more confused by its past or more terrified of the future than the South.
“What if me trying to hold the world together is what keeps me from falling apart?”
“Everything you need to solve a crime is already within your grasp. It’s like you are putting together a jigsaw puzzle of a snowstorm. You have to take a step back and see how everything fits together,” Special Agent Tolliver used to say, before Red DeCrain’s wife and kids blew him into a million little pieces.
“He said my flock wasn’t safe.”
And I’m not the woman you want to help you out of that hole you made for yourself.”
“I do know you. And I know you weren’t going over there to cheat. I’m saying, if you loved me, you wouldn’t have gone over there at all. If you loved me, you would have sent someone to check on me after it happened. But it didn’t even occur to you, did it?” Darlene said. Tears shone bright like diamonds against her cheeks.
The darkness won’t be denied. Everyone feels it now. It slips unbidden into their hearts like a cold winter wind. It infects the days like an eclipse and the nights like a blanket made of dread.
What God would allow such a curse to befall his people? No one will say it aloud, but many, many congregants are having a crisis of the soul. Many are putting their faith in shotgun shells and .357s, not the carpenter from Galilee.
She didn’t have the heart to tell her it wasn’t bravery or independence that was driving her. It was pure uncut terror. From the moment she heard about the attack, all she could think was, RUN.
She couldn’t see a scenario where she was the one that he chose. It was this realization that drove her down Interstate 95.
Dayane Carter welcomed the darkness. In its embrace she found peace. It was there she was safe. There she couldn’t see what he’d done to her flesh.
Sometimes that star felt like a shield over your heart, sometimes it felt like an anchor dragging you down, and other times, well, other times it felt like a cheap-ass piece of tin.
For a lot of these folks that statue is just a symbol of everything they fear they’ve lost.
I saw your brother walking all alone today.
A key to finally let in the light and chase away the darkness that had enveloped them like a mourning shroud ever since he’d first seen those poor broken bodies among the roots of the weeping willow tree.
