The Darkest Child Quotes

“What good are laws that cannot be read or understood, or a tongue that spews only hatred or ignorance? What good is the written word to an illiterate man?”
― Delores Phillips, The Darkest Child

“She denied and feared God in the same breath. She allowed our actions to shame her, and yet was void of shame. I truly believed there was something unnatural about her - a madness only her children could see. My yearning was not to understand it, but to escape it.”
― Delores Phillips, The Darkest Child

“I wanna leave here myself. But when I leave, whether it's on a bus or train or in a pine box, somebody gon' know I was here.”
― Delores Phillips, The Darkest Child

“Satan is not going to leave. The only way to get him out is to invite God in, and God is not welcome in my mother's house.”
― Delores Phillips, The Darkest Child

“I touch my scar to remind myself that I am not a coward. I am a Quinn.”
― Delores Phillips, The Darkest Child

“Fear was a thing I understood all too well. It was a malignancy that had spread throughout my body until my mother, in her godly wisdom, had diagnosed and cauterized it.”
― Delores Phillips, The Darkest Child

“Anger is airborne. It can be inhaled, and once it enters a body it becomes a tenacious blob of blues and browns with tiny speckles of red. It settles heavy in the lungs, making breathing ever so difficult.”
― Delores Phillips, The Darkest Child

“I sat at the table and listened to the women swap stories about the people in our town.They were able to find so much to laugh about; I wondered who was sitting at a table somewhere laughing at us.”
― Delores Phillips, The Darkest Child

“I’m a talker, but that doesn’t necessarily make a leader.”
― Delores Phillips, The Darkest Child

“The best way to get them is through education,” Junior countered. “What good are laws that cannot be read or understood, or a tongue that spews only hatred and ignorance? What good is the written word to an illiterate man?”
― Delores Phillips, The Darkest Child

“It was late afternoon, and only six men were left loitering about the depot. My brother, Sam, was one of them. He wore overalls and a plaid shirt. His hair was cut in the high-right and low-left style that most of the young men wore. He was neither the tallest nor the shortest man on the platform. What set him apart from the others was his light complexion and the sandy-brown color of his hair. He looked like, and was often mistaken for, a white man, although everybody in Pakersfield knew he was Negro. Probably the only person who did not know he was colored was our mother. She took pleasure in categorizing her children by race. Mushy, Harvey, Sam, and Martha Jean were her white children. Tarabelle, Wallace, and Laura were Indians - Cherokee, no less. Edna and I were Negroes.”
― Delores Phillips, The Darkest Child

“I loved her with all my heart, but if she did not die by Monday morning, I was determined to discover from the pages of my schoolbooks, how to break the chains that bound me to my mother.”
― Delores Phillips, The Darkest Child

“I expect you to come together as a race,” Hambone answered. “I expect you to stop staring at the ground every time you speak to a white man that ain’t a drop better than you. I expect you to be the men you were born to be, and to demand your God-given right to be human.”
― Delores Phillips, The Darkest Child

“I want what everybody else want. I want a job. I wanna drink from that fountain down at the courthouse. I want Andy to be a sheriff if that’s what he wanna be. I’m tired of being on the back end of things like I just don’t count. I wanna be able to move my mama outta this house, move her to East Grove or Meadow Hill. I wanna see Chadlow brought down, and I wanna feel like a man in this town. I want a whole lotta things, Junior.And if I can’t get ’em, I wanna take one of them pencils of yours and erase this town off the face of the earth.”
― Delores Phillips, The Darkest Child

“One of them told me that the United States Constitution gave Chad Lowe the right to bear arms.” Junior paused.“I asked him if it gave me the same right. He stopped laughing then, told me to try it and see.”
― Delores Phillips, The Darkest Child

“I know knives and guns are not the answer. Once we get a fight like that started, who will have the power to stop it? How many deaths will be enough?”
― Delores Phillips, The Darkest Child

“I wondered that day if I was the only one in the room who knew that there was something terribly wrong with our mother.”
― Delores Phillips, The Darkest Child

“I glanced over and saw the sheriff, Angus Betts, sitting in his cruiser, watching us. Even seated, the sheriff was an intimidating figure. He was over six feet tall with a tightness about him that seemed to start at his waist and move up across his chest and into his neck and jaws, and he had a nose that was exceptionally thick for a white man's. I guessed him to be in his late thirties or early forties because of the way his hazel eyes stared out at the world with what appeared to be boredom, as though he had seen it all before and would not be surprised by anything or anybody.”
― Delores Phillips, The Darkest Child

“In less than five minutes our mother had taught us to never touch her metal box, and the true meaning of fear. I wondered that day if I was the only one in the room who knew that there was something terribly wrong with our mother.”
― Delores Phillips, The Darkest Child

“Tarabelle was sixteen and almost as tall as Mama. She had long, jet black hair, a copper-colored complexion, and the cold, black eyes of a dead poker player. I had never seen the eyes of a dead person - in fact, I had never seen a poker game - but I had heard that poker faces were expressionless, and I knew that dead people showed no emotion. That was Tarabelle. She stepped back, regarded our mother with those cold black eyes. Her mouth twitched as if she might smile, but I knew better.”
― Delores Phillips, The Darkest Child

“All of my life had been these three drafty rooms under the same rusted tin roof. The house swayed in the wind but stood. It absorbed its fill of rainwater and stood. It groaned under the weight of celebrations and sorrows but did not crumble. But for how much longer? I thought we might wake up one morning - or not wake up - in the rocky, muddy gully below. Or maybe we would simply blow across the dirt road and get lost in the overgrown field of weeds. I could not predict what would happen, but I feared we were destined for disaster.”
― Delores Phillips, The Darkest Child

“Our house stood alone on a hill off Penyon Road, about half a mile outside the city limits. It was old, crippled, and diseased - an emblem of poverty and neglect. Nature had tried to cure it by embracing the rear frame with herbs, roots, and a jumble of foliage which spilled over from the surrounding woodland. Nature had failed, and in frustration she sought to destroy the house by eroding the very foundation on which it stood.”
― Delores Phillips, The Darkest Child

“This bag is filled with nourishment for the mind and soul. What I have here, Tangy, are promises and hopes, as well as scattered disillusionments. It’s like filling your plate with ham, green beans, and potato salad, only to have someone come along and spoon lumpy, dried-out oatmeal on the side. Wouldn’t that spoil your appetite?”
― Delores Phillips, The Darkest Child