Killers of the Dream Quotes

“The human heart dares not stay away from that which hurt it most. There is a return journey to anguish that few of us are released from making.”
― Lillian E. Smith, Killers of the Dream

“The mother who taught me what I know of tenderness and love and compassion taught me also the bleak rituals of keeping Negroes in their 'place.' The father who rebuked me for an air of superiority toward schoolmates from the mill and rounded out his rebuke by gravely reminding me that 'all men are brothers,' trained me in the steel-rigid decorums I must demand of every colored male. They who so gravely taught me to split my body from my mind and both from my 'soul,' taught me also to split my conscience from my acts and Christianity from southern tradition.”
― Lillian E. Smith, Killers of the Dream

“So we learned the dance that cripples the human spirit, step by step by step, we who were white and we who were colored, day by day, hour by hour, year by year until the movements were reflexes and made for the rest of our life without thinking.”
― Lillian E. Smith, Killers of the Dream