The Wind Done Gone Quotes

“Debt Chauffeur, that's my name for him now, wants to marry me. He asked me down on bended knee, and I would have been honored - except he wants us to live in London, and he wants me to live white. I crowed at that. I laughed so hard and not a tear came. He couldn't understand it. I don't often think on how white I look; it's always been a question of how colored I feel, and I feel plenty colored. He said that no one in London will know that I'm supposed to be colored. And I said I am colored, colored black, the way I talk, the way I cook, the way I do most everything, and he said but you don't have to be. ”
― Alice Randall, The Wind Done Gone

“All the different ways of talking English I throw together like a salad and dine greedily in my mongrel tongue.”
― Alice Randall, The Wind Done Gone: A Novel

“There are facts can poison you dead as arsenic. I have long known this to be true. There are facts can get you drunker than sipping whiskey straight.”
― Alice Randall, The Wind Done Gone

“The front of my head feels like a house, and the thoughts reside within different set places that I can rearrange like furniture, but mostly I don't. I come from a furniture-dodging tribe. We tiptoe around the pieces as they remain in place. I'm thinking that way again. Strange, the small things that make us proud.”
― Alice Randall, The Wind Done Gone: A Novel

“I'm greedy for a second serving of those words. I want a dessert of those words, a soup, a salad. I wanted to salt those words and snap them in like peanuts.”
― Alice Randall, The Wind Done Gone: A Novel

“I wanted to slap Miss Priss. Slap her hard. But I didn't do it. It always been this way with me. I'll call another girl "bitch" before you blink, but I don't like to hit a woman. I guess it always felt like too much of a man to do it. Strange enough. Strength always seemed to rob the girl out of me, so I always take care to keep it hid.”
― Alice Randall, The Wind Done Gone: A Novel

“We were in Venice at the time of the revels before Lent. I went into the plaza wearing a mask and hood. I saw a pretty girl, dark skin, dark eyes. She smelled strong of fish and capers and fried artichokes. I kissed her for Beauty's sake. For Lady's sake. Behind the veil of the mask, in the old Jewish Quarter, I kissed her, kissed her, and didn't cry, because I know one day I will die. And I will not rise again.”
― Alice Randall, The Wind Done Gone: A Novel