Beverly > Beverly's Quotes

“My mother always told me that there is only one way a woman can be truly safe in this world. And that is to be fiercely, inarguably, and masterfully talented. This is different than being intelligent or even educated. (Satomi from Picking Bones From Ash)”
― Marie Mutsuki Mockett, Picking Bones from Ash

“It is very easy to convince yourself that you have done something correctly if you never pay attention to what else you might have done in the first place. (Satomi from Picking Bones From Ash)”
― Marie Mutsuki Mockett, Picking Bones from Ash

“You can't save a person who doesn't want to be saved. It was like Mr. Eddie always told the new gardeners: Everybody's got to kill their own snakes.”
― Pearl Cleage, Till You Hear from Me

“Defiance means you got somebody with power over you.”
― Pearl Cleage, Till You Hear from Me

“Both men knew the only thing more valuable than a favor well done was a secret well kept. This had the potential to be both.”
― Pearl Cleage, Till You Hear from Me

“Sometimes you have to show them what they want to see in order to get them to show you who they really are.”
― Pearl Cleage, Till You Hear from Me

“And like some part of himself that, two days ago, had thought pray and propriety were antidote enough to what ailed the world.”
― Zoe Ferraris, City of Veils

“Desperation's heated breath singed my neck, its jagged teeth prepared to devour my flesh. Poverty growled too, waiting its turn, famished yet patient, a beast that dined on the bones of men.”
― Eric Jerome Dickey, Tempted by Trouble

“But sometimes living in denial was the only way to keep a man from going on a killing spree.”
― Eric Jerome Dickey, Tempted by Trouble

“Aura is convinced that the entire country has succumbed to a collective amnesia. This is what happened in a society, where no one is permitted to grow old slowly. Nobody talks of the past, for fear their wounds might reopen. Privately though, their wounds never heal.”
― Cristina Garcia, The Lady Matador's Hotel

“That fella there be the Devil's own pirate.”
― Skip Horack, The Eden Hunter

“From what he knew of gifts they were almost always more than what they seemed.”
― Skip Horack, The Eden Hunter

“Ghosts are common to the life of any child:mine just happened to come to dinner more often than most”
― Dinaw Mengestu, How to Read the Air

“The world around us is alive, he would have said, with our emotions and thoughts, and the space between any two people are charged with them all. He had learned early in his life that before any violent gesture there is a moment when the act is born, not as something that can be seen or felt, but by the change it precipitates in the air.”
― Dinaw Mengestu, How to Read the Air

“At night my father often heard sporadic gunfire mixed in with the sound of dogs howling. If the war came closer, soon there would be only minor difference between shooting a dog and shooting a man.”
― Dinaw Mengestu, How to Read the Air

“Who but the devil lives like a king in the middle of hell”
― James Patterson, Cross Country

“There were in life rarely, if ever, "right" decisions, never perfect ones, only the best to be made under the circumstances.”
― Amy Waldman, The Submission

“Nothing in life gets dropped without someone else having to pick it up.”
― Amy Waldman, The Submission

“Warren was the first man who pried her open without permission, kissed away her shame, and dismissed that which she deemed ugly. The connection between them was fierce, and she felt revered by his attention and care.”
― Sadeqa Johnson, Love in a Carry-on Bag

“I think fiction allows us to sit for a while with people we would rather not meet.”
― Uwem Akpan, Say You're One of Them

“She wishes she had looked more closely at every bit of her world when she was growing up so she could give more of it to Wash but it had been wrapped so close around her, she had no idea she would ever be without it.”
― Margaret Wrinkle, Wash

“History is the third parent.”
― Nadeem Aslam, The Blind Man's Garden

“Wounds are said to emit light under certain conditions - touch them and the brightness will stay on the hands - and as candles burn Rohan thinks of each flame as an injury somewhere in his house.”
― Nadeem Aslam, The Blind Man's Garden

“I keep on making myself little goals, but every time I achieve one of them. I'm forced to face up to the fact that nothing has changed. The thing that is still wrong and always will be. But that's too difficult to face, so all I can do is to pick another goal and start again.”
― Saira Shah, The Mouse-Proof Kitchen

“Is love like a mineral, to be chipped away with every new problem or deficiency?”
― Saira Shah, The Mouse-Proof Kitchen

“You are the backstage crew in the drama of their lives. If they need you, they do not know it and do not care. Open your eyes.”
― Kopano Matlwa, Coconut

“We are hunting the demons that haunt others. We get a smell and off we go. And you know why, Sunil? You know why we are so good at hunting the demons of others? Because we are so good, gifted even, at stalking and evading our own. But all demons hunters think that they are really heroes, and you know what all heroes need?”
― Chris Abani, The Secret History of Las Vegas

“Circuses are about entertainment and juggling and animals and all that shit. Sideshows are about freaks, about people and the limits of acceptability. We push those limits. If a circus is an escape, Fire said, a sideshow is a confrontation.”
― Chris Abani, The Secret History of Las Vegas

“Time was the only variable in every equation of power and oppression-how long before the pot boiled over.”
― Chris Abani, The Secret History of Las Vegas

“Fear is a vice that takes root once it is cultivated. It takes time to recover from it.”
― Marie Vieux-Chauvet, Love, Anger, Madness: A Haitian Trilogy