The Women of Brewster Place Quotes

“Time's passage through the memory is like molten glass that can be opaque or crystalize at any given moment at will: a thousand days are melted into one conversation, one glance, one hurt, and one hurt can be shattered and sprinkled over a thousand days. It is silent and elusive, refusing to be damned and dripped out day by day; it swirls through the mind while an entire lifetime can ride like foam on the deceptive, transparent waves and get sprayed onto the conciousness at ragged, unexpected intervals. ”
― Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place

“Time's passage through the memory is like molten glass that can be opaque or crystallize at any given moment at will: a thousand days are melted into one conversation, one glance, one hurt, and one hurt can be shattered and sprinkled over a thousand days.”
― Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place

“Brewster Place became especially fond of its colored daughters as they milled like determined spirits among its decay, trying to make it home. Nutmeg arms leaned over windowsills, gnarled ebony legs carried groceries up double flights of steps, and saffron hands strung out wet laundry on backyard lines. Their perspiration mingled with the steam from boiling pots of smoked pork greens, and it curled on the edges of the aroma of vinegar douches and Evening in Paris cologne that drifted through the street where they stood together - hands on hips, straight-backed, round-bellied, high-behinded women who threw their heads back when they laughed and exposed strong teeth and dark gums. They cursed, badgered, worshiped, and shared their men. Their love drove them to fling dishcloths in someone else's kitchen to help him make the rent, or to fling hot lye to help him forget that bitch behind the counter at the five-and-dime. They were hard-edged, soft-centered, brutally demanding, and easily pleased, these women of Brewster Place. They came, they went, grew up, and grew old beyond their years. Like an ebony phoenix, each in her own time and with her own season had a story.”
― Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place

“She had stepped into the thin strip of earth that they claimed as their own. Bound by the last building on Brewster and a brick wall, they reigned in that unlit alley like dwarfed warrior kings. Born with the appendages of power, circumcised by the guillotine, and baptized with the steam from a million non reflective mirrors, these young men wouldn't be called upon to thrust a bayonet into an Asian farmer, target a torpedo, scatter their iron seed from a B-52 into the wound of the earth, point a finger to move a nation, or stick a pole into the moon--and they knew it. They only had that three-hundred-foot alley to serve them as stateroom, armored tank, and executioner's chamber.”
― Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place

“Curl moaned. Mattie rocked. Propelled by the sound, Mattie rocked her out of that bed, out of that room, into a blue vastness just underneath the sun and above time. She rocked her over Aegean seas so clean they shine like crystal, so clear the fresh blood of sacrificed babies torn from their mothers arms and given to Neptune could be seen like pink froth on the water. She rocked her on and on, past Dachau, where soul-gutted Jewish mothers swept their children's entrails off laboratory floors. They flew past the spilled brains of Senegalese infants whose mothers had dashed them on the wooden sides of slave ships. And she rocked on.
She rocked her into her childhood and let her see murdered dreams. And she rocked her back, back into the womb, to the nadir of her hurt, and they found it-a slight silver splinter, embedded just below the surface of her skin. And Mattie rocked and pulled-and the splinter gave way, but its roots were deep, gigantic, ragged, and they tore up flesh with bits of fat and muscle tissue clinging to them. They left a huge hole, which was already starting to pus over, but Mattie was satisfied. It would heal.”
― Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place

“She sincerely liked Mattie because unlike the others, Mattie never found the time to do jury duty on other people’s lives.”
― Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place

“Then she turned and firmly folded her evening like gold and lavender gauze deep within the creases of her dreams, and let her clothes drop to the floor”
― Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place

“A rumor needs no true parent. It only needs a willing carrier,”
― Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place

“And she looked at the blushing woman on her couch and suddenly realized that her mother had trod through the same universe that she herself was now traveling. Kiswana was breaking no new trails and would eventually end up just two feet away on that couch. She stared at the woman she had been and was to become.”
― Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place

“God had given her what she prayed for—a little boy who would always need her.”
― Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place

“She studied the fine lines and loops, commas and periods that had come between them, and they etched themselves into her mind.”
― Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place

“Basil stopped crying instantly in order to enjoy Ciel’s punishment.”
― Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place

“Etta and Mattie went way back, a singular term that claimed co-knowledge of all the important events in their lives and almost all of the unimportant ones.”
― Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place

“Ceil moaned. Mattie rocked. Propelled by the sound, Mattie rocked her out of that bed, out of that room, into a blue vastness just underneath the sun and above time. She rocked her over Aegean seas so clean they shine like crystal, so clear the fresh blood of sacrificed babies torn from their mothers arms and given to Neptune could be seen like pink froth on the water. She rocked her on and on, past Dachau, where soul-gutted Jewish mothers swept their children's entrails off laboratory floors. They flew past the spilled brains of Senegalese infants whose mothers had dashed them on the wooden sides of slave ships. And she rocked on.
She rocked her into her childhood and let her see murdered dreams. And she rocked her back, back into the womb, to the nadir of her hurt, and they found it-a slight silver splinter, embedded just below the surface of her skin. And Mattie rocked and pulled-and the splinter gave way, but its roots were deep, gigantic, ragged, and they tore up flesh with bits of fat and muscle tissue clinging to them. They left a huge hole, which was already starting to pus over, but Mattie was satisfied. It would heal.”
― Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place

“The unpainted walls of the long rectangular room were soaked with the smell of greasy chicken and warm, headless beer. The brown and pink faces floated above the trails of used cigarette smoke like bodiless carnival balloons.”
― Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place

“Cora flanked the group like a successful drill sergeant, and she made a point of personally addressing each neighbor that was standing on the stoop and alongside the outside railing, ignoring the openly surprise stairs as they emerge from the building. Where could she be going with all them kids? The welfare office wasn't open.”
― Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place

“Cora Lee mustn't let the Murphy boy or any other boy show her the thing that felt good in the dark, because her body could now make babies and she wasn't old enough to be a mother. Did she understand? And as she would watch the disjointed mysteries of life connect up in her daughter's mind and hear her breathe out with enchanted wonder--- "A real baby, Mother?"--- the image of that Christmas would come smashing into her brain like a meat cleaver. It was then that she began to worry.”
― Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place

“He glided to the podium with the effortlessness of a well-oiled machine and stood still for an interminable long moment. He eyed the congregation confidently. He only needed their attention for that split second because once he got it, he was going to wrap his voice around their souls and squeeze until they screamed to be relieved. They knew it was coming and waited expectantly, breathing in unison as one body. First he played with them and threw out fine silken threads that stroked their heart muscles ever so gently. They trem-bled ecstatically at the touch and invited more. The threads multiplied and entwined themselves solidly around the one pulsating organ they had become and tightened slightly, testing them for a reaction.

The "Amen, brothers" and "Yes, Jesus" were his permission to take that short hop from the heart to the soul and lay all pretense of gentleness aside. Now he would have to push and pound with clenched fists in order to be felt, and he dared not stop the fierce rhythm of his voice until their re-plies had reached that fevered pitch of satisfaction. Yes, Lord grind out the unheated tenements! Merciful Jesus-shove aside the low-paying boss man. Perfect Father-fill me, fill me till there's no room, no room for nothing else, not even that great big world out there that exacts such a strange penalty for my being born black.”
― Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place

“All the beautiful plants that once had an entire sun porch for themselves in the home she had exchanged thirty years of her life to pay for would now have to fight for the light on a crowded windowsill.”
― Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place

“Mattie followed her up the stone steps, trying to adjust her mind to this rapid turn of events and the nameless old woman who had altered their destinies. They entered the house and she set her suitcase on the thick green carpet and looked around the huge living room overcrowded with ex pensive mahogany furniture and china brie-a-brac. Through a door on the right, a yellowing crystal and brass chandelier hung over an oak table large enough to seat twelve people.

"Don't mind the house, child. I know it's a mess but I ain't got the strength I once had to keep it tidy. I guess you must be hungry. Come on in the kitchen." And she ended for the back of the house with the baby

Mattie was beginning to collect herself. "But I don't even now your name!" She called out, still fixed to the living room floor.

The old woman turned around. "That mean you can't eat my food? Well, since you gotta be properly introduced, the name of what's in the kitchen is pot roast, oven-browned potatoes, and string beans. And I believe there's even some angel food cake waitin' to make your acquaintance.”
― Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place

“His clear brown eyes were heavily lashed, and many young women had discovered just one heartbeat too late at his slightly drooping eyelids or not mirrors of boys seductiveness but hardened apathy.”
― Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place

“That's one of the privileges of old age, - you can give plenty of advice 'cause most folks think that's all you got left anyway.”
― Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place (Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series) [Paperback]

“And Ciel lay down and cried. But Mattie knew the tears would end. And she would sleep. And morning would come.”
― Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place

“Confronted with the difference that had been thrust into their predictable world, they reached into their imaginations and, using an ancient pattern, weaved themselves a reason for its existence. Out of necessity they stitched all of their secret fears and lingering childhood nightmares into this existence, because even though it was deceptive enough to try and look as they looked, talk as they talked, and do as they did, it had to have some hidden stain to invalidate it—it was impossible for them both to be right.”
― Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place

“Ciel moaned. Mattie rocked. Propelled by the sound, Mattie rocked her out of that bed, out of that room, into a blue vastness just underneath the sun and above time. She rocked her over Aegean seas so clean they shone like crystal, so clear the fresh blood of sacrificed babies torn from their mother’s arms and given to Neptune could be seen like pink froth on the water. She rocked her on and on, past Dachau, where soul-gutted Jewish mothers swept their children’s entrails off laboratory floors. They flew past the spilled brains of Senegalese infants whose mothers had dashed them on the wooden sides of slave ships. And she rocked on. She rocked her into her childhood and let her see murdered dreams. And she rocked her back, back into the womb, to the nadir of her hurt, and they found it—a slight silver splinter, embedded just below the surface of the skin. And Mattie rocked and pulled—and the splinter gave way, but its roots were deep, gigantic, ragged, and they tore up flesh with bits of fat and muscle tissue clinging to them. They left a huge hole, which was already starting to pus over, but Mattie was satisfied. It would heal.”
― Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place

“The pressure on her arm brought Etta back onto the uncomfortable wooden pew. But she didn’t want to stay there, so she climbed back out the window, through the glass eyes of the seven-foot Good Shepherd, and started again the futile weaving of invisible ifs and slippery mights into an equally unattainable past.”
― Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place

“But she didn’t want to stay there, so she climbed back out the window, through the glass eyes of the seven-foot Good Shepherd, and started again the futile weaving of invisible ifs and slippery mights into an equally unattainable past.”
― Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place

“The alien pounding and the heat and the dark glistening bodies dragged her back, back past the cold ashes of her innocence to a time when pain could be castrated on the sharp edges of iron-studded faith.”
― Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place

“Reminiscences of old, dried-over pains were no consolation in the face of this. They had the effect of cold beads of water on a hot iron - they danced and fizzled up while the room stank from their steam.”
― Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place

“An entire week of drawn shades was evidence enough to send her flying around with reports that as soon as it got dark they pulled their shades down and put on the lights. Heads nodded in knowing unison—a definite sign. If doubt was voiced with a “But I pull my shades down at night too,” a whispered “Yeah, but you’re not that way” was argument enough to win them over.”
― Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place