Red Hills and Cotton Quotes

“The past that Southerners are forever talking about is not a dead past--it is a chapter from the legend that our kinfolks have told us, it is a living past, living for a reason. The past is a part of the present, it is a comfort, a guide, a lesson.”
― Ben Robertson, Red Hills and Cotton: An Upcountry Memory

“It is a great comfort to a rambling people to know that somewhere there is a permanent home--perhaps it is the most final of the comforts they ever really know.”
― Ben Robertson, Red Hills and Cotton: An Upcountry Memory

“It was not the goal that really concerned us, the journey was the thing. Who ever reaches any goal? From what journey can we return? We know of the poverty about us, of the work and worry, but we know of a degree of freedom, of a stunted beauty. We have warm open days and sunshine in Carolina. Much is denied us. But we have, we have. And an attitude is more powerful than any circumstance.”
― Ben Robertson, Red Hills and Cotton: An Upcountry Memory

“We have been told to ask about everything: Will it leave us free?”
― Ben Robertson, Red Hills and Cotton: An Upcountry Memory

“My kinfolks thought more about character than about culture. They said culture could be acquired but character had to be formed. Character had to be hammered into shape like hot iron on an anvil. It had to be molded in the most exact and unrelenting form.”
― Ben Robertson, Red Hills and Cotton: An Upcountry Memory

“It is defeat that lives on and takes the years to smother.”
― Ben Robertson, Red Hills and Cotton: An Upcountry Memory