Tuff Quotes

“Winston knew better than to give a heartfelt synopsis of a grainy black-and-white film that had inadvertently touched his heart and caused him to empathize with a loafer-shod French boy, Doinel, the young, unloved Parisian, running toward the sea in the last reel. Winston had wanted to chase behind him, clasp him on the shoulder. Wait up. Where you going? Can I come with you? What's the story with this fat motherfucker Balzac?”
― Paul Beatty, Tuff

“Winston, you have no idea what the city will do to rig the election. I just came from the polls at P.S. 57 and they've got six cops standing out in front of the place. Now people in this neighborhood, especially the people who'd vote for you, wouldn't walk through six policemen to get free beer, much less vote.”
― Paul Beatty, Tuff

“I didn't expect to be so nervous. The curtain and shit. I didn't know if it was naked lady behind there or priest. Voting is fuckin' weird, what they need to play some music in there to set the mood.”
― Paul Beatty, Tuff

“Their skins burned pimiento red, white people soaking up more than their share of the sun filled the Great Lawn from the far softball fields to the turtle pond. The air smelled of Brie, grapes, and Australian white wines. Normally, Winston would've avoided a mob of white folks as if it were, well, a mob of white folks. But this time, the iron lance of King Wladyslaw II's statue prodding him in the back, he plunged into the throng, settling between the tartan blankets of two Upper East Side preppy families. After checking their immediate surroundings, ensuring that nothing valuable was within Winston's reach, the blond family smiled and politely offered him a plate of wafers and Roquefort and a clear plastic cup of wine.”
― Paul Beatty, Tuff

“I wasn't listening too hard, but I heard him say something about we need to imagine ourselves beyond race. Look at me," Winston said, raising his arms to crucifixion height. "What you see is what you get, a big black motherfucker from a low-budget environment. If I'd been to outer space, written books, had dollars, drove a Mercedes-Benz, I'd imagine myself beyond race too. I'd imagine myself way beyond race. I'd imagine myself right out of this fucked-up neighborhood. Leave y'all motherfuckers behind to fend for yourselves.”
― Paul Beatty, Tuff

“I ain't saying waste your vote on me, because I ain't the somebody that give a fuck, but you need to vote for somebody.”
― Paul Beatty, Tuff

“When's the election?"

"Next Tuesday. Y'all niggers going to vote for me?"

A slender snaggle-toothed boy waved his hand in front of his face. "Get real, dog. I'm from the projects, dog. That vote shit ain't for niggers like me.”
― Paul Beatty, Tuff

“What's the difference between white people and black folks?"

"Is that a riddle?"

"No, I'm serious."

"White people eat ice cream year-round, even in the winter. And when they give you a ride home, they drop you off, then drive away as soon as you get out of the car. Black folks wait until you're safely inside.”
― Paul Beatty, Tuff

“People are fucked up? Man, tell me something I don't know.”
― Paul Beatty, Tuff

“Until Brooklyn none of us ain't never vetoed an idea by saying it was stupid. If you think about it, whatever we do is always stupid. So stupid or not, you supposed to be there.”
― Paul Beatty, Tuff

“I'm going to vote for you--I like a man who supports the community. You better not get in office and start fucking up."

"What could I possibly do to make things worse?”
― Paul Beatty, Tuff

“Any nigger who marry a white girl is marrying her because she white and no other reason. Unless a nigger meets a white bitch because they the sole survivors of an airplane crash and stranded on a desert island, he marrying her because she white. I don't give a fuck what he say about true love, pretty eyes, and a nice disposition.”
― Paul Beatty, Tuff

“But what I want to know is why lesbians dress so fuckin' bad? I mean, they dress like they going to a cookout to roast frankfurters and eat discount potato chips. What they carry in their purses? Paper plates and plastic forks? Tan shorts, hiking boots, purple socks, and a fucked-up haircut. Look like they ready to pitch a tent and have a potato-sack race at a moment's notice.”
― Paul Beatty, Tuff

“The symptoms of poverty are timeless, and Winston knew exactly who the weepy kid looked like: an extra from John Ford's Grapes of Wrath. A Brooklyn Joad, sullied from head to toe with the grime of parental and societal neglect.”
― Paul Beatty, Tuff

“Inez looked tired but hopeful. She was developing bags not only under her eyes but over them. If nothing else, the Revolution was exhausting.”
― Paul Beatty, Tuff

“I know I told you about the time we arrested the Statue of Liberty for false advertising.”
― Paul Beatty, Tuff

“Winston, you don't know it, but you'd be a really good city councilman."

"Man, I don't know shit about politics. No, wait, hold up, I do know something." Winston swallowed his food and began singing in a shower-perfected baritone that rarely graced the world excepting in drunken soft lullabies to his son.

I'm just a bill. Yes, I'm only a bill
And I'm sitting here on Capitol Hill.”
― Paul Beatty, Tuff

“Ms. Nomura, it's so big."

"What is?"

"The district. I'm mean, I got the park, the West Side, everything but the fancy buildings on Central Park West and Fifth Avenue."

"Well, East Harlem's interests and their interests are different."

"Don't everybody pretty much want the same things--jobs, good schools, and shit?"

"Yeah, but they don't want you in their neighborhood, much less having any say-so over their lives.”
― Paul Beatty, Tuff

“He only has two emotions: serious and serious as fuck, straight up.”
― Paul Beatty, Tuff

“Now, Clifford, I'm not saying Winston should run, but think about it--who's qualified? That black man they always talking running for president in the next election? Because he gives a good press conference he's qualified? If he ever does decide to run, you know what the first thing he's going to be--unqualified.”
― Paul Beatty, Tuff

“I vote," Winston said, wiping the top of his head with a napkin.

"Who you voted for?"

"Voted for president."

"The one we got now?"

"Fuck I look like?”
― Paul Beatty, Tuff

“For Winston language was an extension of his soul. And if his speech, filled with double negatives, improper conjugations of the verb "to be," and pluralized plurals (e.g., womens), was wrong, then his thoughts were wrong.”
― Paul Beatty, Tuff

“Is that your son? He's so cute, may I hold him?" Winston turned his back to her, wheeling the baby out of reach. "Can't do that. No white person has ever touched him. If one does, I'll have to kill him. Like a mama rabbit does when a human handles her kid.”
― Paul Beatty, Tuff

“God ain't never spoke to you?"

"I don't believe in God."

"You're a rabbi, how can you not believe in God?"

"It's what's so great about being Jewish. You don't have to believe in a God per se, just in being Jewish.”
― Paul Beatty, Tuff

“You remember when I told you I was looking for understanding?"

Spencer nodded.

"I now understand that understanding is not something you look for, it's something that finds you.”
― Paul Beatty, Tuff

“And if the lead is played by a man?"

"If it's a man, especially if it's a white man--and it usually is, even if a nigger is the star--then the film has to be about right and wrong. And whiteys is the last motherfuckers on earth to be teaching me about right and wrong. Much less charging me for the lesson.”
― Paul Beatty, Tuff

“Hadar, the only time I feel black is when I look at my hands," Spencer said, spreading his fingers out in front of him.

"How do you feel when you aren't looking at your hands?" Hadar asked.

"Normal.”
― Paul Beatty, Tuff

“The day Malcolm was shot, Inez drank herself numb at Showman's Tavern, listening to the jukebox shuffle between Lunceford, Holiday, Eckstine, Parker, and twenty nickels of Etta James. The regulars commiserated over long-neck beers, thankful they still had Martin Luther King Jr.'s persistence and Father Divine's ten-cent dinners. Told you they'd get that nigger. Shit, I give the playboy reverend four years tops. He talking about poor people and Indochina--that's fucking with The Man's money.”
― Paul Beatty, Tuff

“Yolanda turned and flipped a lavender acrylic talon at the trio. Inez raised a V for Victory into the air and teasingly shouted, "Workers of the world, unite!"

Bendito Bonilla replied, "None of these motherfuckers have jobs, so what you talking about, 'workers'?”
― Paul Beatty, Tuff

“Like many bullied city kids, the Bonilla brothers had become auxiliary police officers right after finishing high school. Their civil servitude stemmed not from any sense of social justice; rather, it was a state-sanctioned training course for a job that would serve as an outlet for their vengeance and pent-up rage.”
― Paul Beatty, Tuff