Octavia > Octavia's Quotes

“Sometimes God gives you things not because you like them, but because you need them”
― Beverly Jenkins, Something Old, Something New

“Life has many sorrows, but it can potentially hold
Solace and Love as well.”
― Beverly Jenkins, Something Old, Something New

“Life's too short not to embrace the things that could bring us Joy!”
― Beverly Jenkins, Something Old, Something New

“ROSE: I been standing with you! I been right here with you, Troy. I got a life, too. I gave eighteen years of my life to stand in the same spot with you. Don't you think I ever wanted other things? Don't you think I had dreams and hopes? What about my life? What about me. Don't you think it ever crossed my mind to want to know other men? That I wanted to lay up somewhere and forget about my responsibilities? That I wanted someone to make me laugh so I could feel good? You not the only one who's got wants and needs. But I held on to you, Troy. I took all my feelings, my wants and needs, my dreams...and I buried them inside you. I planted a seed and watched and prayed over it. I planted myself inside you and waited to bloom. And it didn't take me not eighteen years to find out the soil was hard and rocky and it wasn't never gonna bloom. But I held on to you. I held you tighter. You was my husband. I owed you everything I had. Every part of me I could find to give you. And upstairs in that room...with the darkness falling in on me...I gave everything I had to try and erase the doubt that you wasn't the fines man in the world. And wherever you was going...I wanted to be there with you. Cause you was my husband. Cause that's the only way I was gonna survive as your wife. You always taking about what you give...and what you don't have to give. But you take too. You take...and you don't even know nobody's giving!”
― August Wilson, Fences

“Don't you try and go through life worrying about if somebody like you or not. You best be making sure they doing right by you.”
― August Wilson, Fences

“Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing.”
― August Wilson

“I been with strangers all day and they treated me like family. I come in here to family and you treat me like a stranger.”
― August Wilson, The Piano Lesson

“In the valley of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”
― August Wilson, Gem of the Ocean

“Live your Days in Love, Miss Nettie. Yes?”
― E.N. Joy, When All Is Said and Prayed

“If God sends you somewhere, it doesn't matter whether anyone shows up or not. As long as you are where you are supposed to be is all God's Concerned about.”
― E.N. Joy, When All Is Said and Prayed

“Either way, I'm the Bride of Christ, and I'm going to keep doing what He calls me to do.”
― E.N. Joy, Lady of the House

“Paula shrugged, "Haven't found the right person yet. Having to share me with God scared off a lot of men.”
― Beverly Jenkins, On the Corner of Hope and Main

“An envious heart makes a treacherous ear.”
― Zora Neale Hurston

“No, I do not weep at the world – I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, How it Feels to be Colored Me

“But she reached for his hand, her fingers wedged against his purity scar. Their palms kissed and he felt, for the first time, that he could be whole.”
― Brit Bennett, The Mothers

“Will made me say it. Worse, he made me feel it. What will that do to me, to him, to all of us?
How dangerous is my love?”
― Catherine Adel West, The Two Lives of Sara

“There's no such thing as a perfect so make peace with that now. Save yourself a lot of tears later.”
― Catherine Adel West, The Two Lives of Sara

“Some things only God needed to know. Some things were just too much for a person to be able to handle.”
― E.N. Joy, I Ain't Me No More

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Just be careful. Our strengths can be our weaknesses, too.”
― Catherine Adel West, Saving Ruby King

“Maybe nothin' ain't real sho' nuff. Maybe 'taint no world. No elements, no nothin'. Maybe wese jus' somewhere in God's mind. But when he wiggled his tired toes the world thudded and throbbed before him.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Jonah's Gourd Vine

“Jesus, take me to your blessed home above
and wrap me in the bosom of thy love...”
― Richard Wright, The Man Who Lived Underground

“This tendency of freely juxtaposing totally unrelated images and symbols and then tying them into some overall concept, mood, feeling, is a trait of Negro thinking and that has always fascinated me.”
― Richard Wright, The Man Who Lived Underground

“And for the first time, I talked to God about it, about this . .. situation. And then I got weepy for real.
"Why?"
He showed me ME — and I hadn't even asked Him too!”
― Kim Cash Tate, Cherished

“Lord, show me ME," because He usually responded with something they wouldn't like.”
― Kim Cash Tate, Cherished

“But then the Lord had spoken to her and had let her know that she could sit around all she wanted, waiting for some man to make an honest woman out of her, but that true self-respect came when a woman made an honest woman out of herself.”
― E.N. Joy, You Get What You Pray For

“You can forgive somebody from a different address!”
― E.N. Joy, You Get What You Pray For

“You know, as an artist, the pain has to come out.”
― E.N. Joy, You Get What You Pray For

“Sometimes i forget to breathe
what exactly does that mean?

(don't forget to breathe, plz)”
― Jhené Aiko Efuru Chilombo, 2Fish: A Poetry Book

“The ignorance is not mine alone.”
― Emmanuel Iduma, I Am Still With You: A Reckoning with Silence, Inheritance, and History