Song for My Fathers Quotes

“everytime you got somethin’ good goin’, look like somebody got to fuck it up.”
― Tom Sancton, Song for My Fathers: A New Orleans Story in Black and White

“Jimmie Davis beat the certifiably insane incumbent Earl K. Long, had been all about keeping blacks out of the schools. On inauguration day, Davis (composer of the song “You Are My Sunshine”) rode his horse right into the legislature”
― Tom Sancton, Song for My Fathers: A New Orleans Story in Black and White

“There was a siren-song magic about their music”
― Tom Sancton, Song for My Fathers: A New Orleans Story in Black and White

“On the far wall, just behind the drummer, a hand-painted black-and-white sign read Traditional request $1; Others $2; The Saints $5.”
― Tom Sancton, Song for My Fathers: A New Orleans Story in Black and White

“It was at this bleak moment that Tom Sancton wandered through the French Quarter one evening and passed by the open wrought-iron gate of 726 St. Peter Street.”
― Tom Sancton, Song for My Fathers: A New Orleans Story in Black and White

“but she doted on her grandchildren. Wendy was her favorite. Meme loved to have the kids visit”
― Tom Sancton, Song for My Fathers: A New Orleans Story in Black and White

“One of his students was an intense young man who was interested in writing fiction. My father lent him some books and talked to him for hours about the art of the novel. The boy went on to write a novel himself, a colorful fantasy about New Orleans, but no one wanted to publish it. He later killed himself. His name was John Kennedy Toole,”
― Tom Sancton, Song for My Fathers: A New Orleans Story in Black and White

“then sang a musical version of the Lord’s Prayer in a wavering, contralto voice with bluesy quarter-tone inflections. It was strange, haunting, beautiful. Even”
― Tom Sancton, Song for My Fathers: A New Orleans Story in Black and White

“taught me to fish in the little lagoon using a bent pin and a piece of bread. Gerry”
― Tom Sancton, Song for My Fathers: A New Orleans Story in Black and White

“This book is a song for my fathers—the white one who sired, raised, and coached me, and the black ones who inspired and encouraged me, and enriched my life beyond measure. It also recounts the life and times of a middle-class white boy growing up in New Orleans in the 1950s and ’60s. New Orleans is more than a backdrop to this drama; it is perhaps the central player, for this story could not have taken place in any other city in the world. The”
― Tom Sancton, Song for My Fathers: A New Orleans Story in Black and White