The Black Hand Quotes

“I wondered if he’d purchased the outfit with our ten pounds, and had a good mind to demand our money back on the grounds of poor taste in fashion.”
― Will Thomas, The Black Hand

“A half hour later the aforementioned blight upon humanity invaded our quarters in his usual manner—”
― Will Thomas, The Black Hand

“The dog and I have a strange relationship: he considers me a servant too addlepated to intuit what he wants, while I consider him to be a burden, though one I’ve grown accustomed to. I let him share my bed and he lets me share his garden.”
― Will Thomas, The Black Hand

“Barker switched newspapers. I don’t believe scenery interests him unless a murder has just been committed in it.”
― Will Thomas, The Black Hand

“If they were Irish instead of Italian, Scotland Yard would have this entire district locked up. Come to think of it, wasn’t the very first Irish bombing here in Clerkenwell?”
― Will Thomas, The Black Hand

“I’ll wager a quarter of our Italian citizens here are in the country illegally, although most are not criminals. Families come here to work hard and prosper, and to no longer have their lives threatened by criminals. In fact, I would say the immigration laws in this country exclude the best Italians and Sicilians, while the criminal element has no problem smuggling itself into England.”
― Will Thomas, The Black Hand

“I will admit I stepped in with some degree of trepidation. Coming from a Low Church, Wesleyan upbringing, one can imagine the impressions I received during my childhood about those so-called idolatrous, land-stealing, Protestant-burning Catholics. As far as my minister and my mother were concerned, they still sold indulgences and put non-believers to the rack.”
― Will Thomas, The Black Hand

“I wish they were lazy workers, these Sicilians. Then I could sack them; but they are hard workers, even if they give themselves airs. Sometimes I wish we had all good, honest Englishmen on these docks like in the old days, but we can’t afford them anymore. The Poles, the Jews, the Chinese, the dagos—they get the work done faster and at less cost.”
― Will Thomas, The Black Hand

“The Italians are willing to work for a wage that, frankly, the English workers won’t accept, but they have begun to demand a minimum number of working hours per day, which is madness, because we can’t guarantee the work.”
― Will Thomas, The Black Hand

“I don’t function well, as a rule, until coffee is singing freely in my veins,”
― Will Thomas, The Black Hand

“I stepped into a book and cartography shop in Cecil Street to while away half an hour,”
― Will Thomas, The Black Hand

“I hate flowers to death. What are they for? You cannot eat them. They die in a day. They are a complete waste of money.”
― Will Thomas, The Black Hand

“he objected to work, but that the world being the harsh place it is he had to suffer his lot like the rest of humanity.”
― Will Thomas, The Black Hand

“The low-lying plants clawed at my trouser legs as I shuffled down the narrow aisle in a fencing stance, leading with my right foot and drawing up my left before stepping out again. I had reason to suspect there was someone in that hot-house jungle, or I’d have been where any sane person would be at that time of night—in bed and thankful for a sturdy roof over my head. Why are leaves from foreign plants always thin and spiky, a danger to one’s eyes? Why can’t they be round and safe like English leaves?”
― Will Thomas, The Black Hand