The Songbook of Benny Lament Quotes

“May we seek to learn each other's stories so that we might love each other a little better.”
― Amy Harmon, The Songbook of Benny Lament

“None of us can help who we are. We are born into the world we are born into. The family. The skin. Nobody gets to choose those things. You can't be mad at a man for who he is. Only what he is...and the choices he makes.”
― Amy Harmon, The Songbook of Benny Lament

“How can we ever learn to love each other if we don't know each other's stories?”
― Amy Harmon, The Songbook of Benny Lament

“If a man can’t protect and provide it’ll make him mean or it’ll drive him crazy.”
― Amy Harmon, The Songbook of Benny Lament

“I’m afraid someone will love me too much,”
― Amy Harmon, The Songbook of Benny Lament

“You know how change happens, Money?” Esther said, not even turning her head. But her eyes were fierce. “How does it happen, Esther?” He sighed. “You show people what it looks like.”
― Amy Harmon, The Songbook of Benny Lament

“I don’t dare. The minute you start relying on something to make you feel better—smokes, alcohol, junk—is the moment you lose your power. Everything feels like a trap. Even people. Especially people.”
― Amy Harmon, The Songbook of Benny Lament

“Ave Maria,” she sang, drawing out the word so I could find my place . . . and follow. Her voice was slow. Low. And bold. She didn’t sing it in Latin, and she didn’t sing in the same key her mother did. She didn’t sing it like a trained soprano at all. She sang it like Esther. Like a woman throwing herself from a cliff because she damn well knew she could fly.”
― Amy Harmon, The Songbook of Benny Lament

“If politics was like the mob, and I was guessing it was, nobody would ever be able to prove anything.”
― Amy Harmon, The Songbook of Benny Lament

“May we seek to learn each other’s stories so that we might love each other a little better.”
― Amy Harmon, The Songbook of Benny Lament

“Bo Johnson straightened his bowler hat and wiped at his cheeks with the back of his sleeve. “Violence isn’t the answer. Change is the answer. But that’s hard. A whole lot harder than throwing a punch.”
― Amy Harmon, The Songbook of Benny Lament

“Amen,” Lee Otis echoed loudly. “Amen,” Esther and Money agreed. I couldn’t speak. My mouth moved around an amen, but my heart was too full. In a few lines, Alvin had given me more family than I’d ever had in my life.”
― Amy Harmon, The Songbook of Benny Lament

“None of us can help who we are. We are born into the world we are born into. The family. The skin. Nobody gets to choose those things. You can’t be mad at a man for who he is. Only what he is . . . and the choices he makes.”
― Amy Harmon, The Songbook of Benny Lament

“Pop said not to trust anyone, and I didn’t trust anyone. But I couldn’t do what I needed to do all by myself. I just hoped if I kept moving, the thing that was chasing us wouldn’t catch up. Or even better, that we’d be too big to take down.”
― Amy Harmon, The Songbook of Benny Lament

“It’s hard to describe to the audience what happened in a very short span of time,” Barry Gray says. “People were talking about you two. Everyone was talking about you two. It wasn’t just your music. It was you. Esther Mine and Benny Lament. It was your story, Bo Johnson’s story, and Maude Alexander’s story all colliding in spectacular fashion.”
― Amy Harmon, The Songbook of Benny Lament

“If you’re just joining us on WMCA, you’re listening to The Barry Gray Show. I’m here with Benny Lament, and we’re talking music, murder, and one of the biggest stories of the decade, for a number of reasons.” “Esther and I had the deck stacked against us, that’s for sure,” Benny Lament says. “There are a lot of layers to your story, layers folks may not know about. It wasn’t just the obvious challenges of love and color.”
― Amy Harmon, The Songbook of Benny Lament

“What were you thinking, Esther?” Gloria groaned. “That song is going to bring the devil to our doorstep.”
― Amy Harmon, The Songbook of Benny Lament

“The woman Bo Johnson intended to marry was Maude Alexander, an opera singer and heiress to a considerable fortune. She was the granddaughter of Thaddeus Morley and the daughter of Rudolf Alexander. The Morleys and Alexanders have become synonymous with names like Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and Carnegie in New York,” Barry Gray informs the audience. “Powerful people,” Benny agrees. “They didn’t care for the song?” “No, Mr. Gray, they didn’t.”
― Amy Harmon, The Songbook of Benny Lament

“Wait, Esther. Wait,” I gasped, lifting my head. I could not love her, not her body, not her mouth, not for one minute more if I didn’t tell her everything: who I was, who she was, and exactly how much trouble we might be in.”
― Amy Harmon, The Songbook of Benny Lament

“We all make judgments, some of them justified. some of them not. We're taught a certain way of thinking and doing, we're taught to blame or justify, and a lot of the time we don't even know we're doing it.”
― Amy Harmon, The Songbook of Benny Lament

“It was the smallest, strangest, most wonderful world. Ugly and beautiful. Ugly and hard.”
― Amy Harmon, The Songbook of Benny Lament