Augustown Quotes

“To know a man properly, you must know the shape of his hurt - the specific wound around which his person has been formed like a scab.”
― Kei Miller, Augustown

“For here is the truth; each day contains much more than its own hours, or minutes, or seconds. In fact, it would be no exaggeration to say that every day contains all of history.”
― Kei Miller, Augustown

“Whenever he cried, his grandmother would always tell him, You need a backbone, boy. She thought this was the way to raise a man-child without quite understanding that sometimes it takes backbone to cry the long length of tears required.”
― Kei Miller, Augustown

“Some days have more roads than others, and some roads more distance, so that when a woman complains how long the day is, maybe she is counting its roads rather than its hours.”
― Kei Miller, Augustown

“To know a man properly, you must know the shape of his hurt – the specific wound around which his person has been formed like a scab.”
― Kei Miller, Augustown

“The great philosophical question goes: if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear, does it make a sound? But this is a troubling question, exalting one kind of being above all others. What then of the ears of snakes, or wood frogs, or mice, or bugs? Do they not count? What then of grass, of stone, of earth? Does their witness not matter? If a man flies in Jamaica, and only the poor will admit to seeing it, has he still flown? (...) Always - always - there are witnesses.”
― Kei Miller, Augustown

“Look, this isn't magic realism. This is not another story about superstitious island people and their primitive beliefs. No. You don't get off that easy. This is a story about people as real as you are, and as real as I once was before I became a bodiless thing floating up here in the sky. You might as well consider a more urgent question; not whether you believe this story or not, but whether this story is about the kinds of people you have never taken the time to believe in.”
― Kei Miller, Augustown

“If you hear him beat that drum he will reveal something of himself to you, for what is a drumbeat, after all, other than the sound of a great hollowness, like death amplified ?”
― Kei Miller, Augustown

“She knew that for people to be people, they had to believe in something. They had to believe that something was worth believing in. And they had to carry that thing in their hearts and guard it, for once you believed in something, in anything at all, Babylon would try its damnedest to find out what that thing was, and they would try to take it from you.”
― Kei Miller, Augustown

“Now focus. 17° 59' 0" North, 76° 44' 0" West. Down there is the Caribbean, though not the bits you might have seen in a pretty little brochure. We are beyond the aquamarine waters, with their slow manatees and graceful sea turtles, and beyond the beaches littered with sweet almonds. We have gone inland. Notice the hills, how one of them carries on its face a scar - a section where bulldozers and tractors have sunk their rusty talons into its cheeks, scraped away the brush and the trees and left behind a white crater of marl. The eyesore can be seen from ten or more miles away. To the people who live in this valley, it feels as if they wear the scar on their own skin - as if a kind of ruin has befallen them.”
― Kei Miller, Augustown

“She knew that for people to be people, they have to be believe in something. They had to believe that something was worth believing in. And they had to carry that thing in their hearts and guard it , for once you believed in something , in anything at all, Babylon would try its damnedest to find out what that thing was, and they would try to take it from you.”
― Kei Miller, Augustown

“But if his feet never shift things on the ground, his presence shifts something in the air, and Ma Taffy always knows when he is around.”
― Kei Miller, Augustown

“Sister Gilzene snapped, for in Augustown any woman could assume the disciplinarian role of mother.”
― Kei Miller, Augustown

“They did not march far: less than a mile, to this valley. They called it Augustown, as if the place itself were the freedom they had just received, but time would teach them disappointment. This place was no freedom, and Massa Day was not done. Massa had only changed his name. He was no longer ‘Busha’ or ‘Buckra’ or ‘Massa’. He was now ‘Boss’ or ‘Miss’ or ‘Sergeant’. Sometimes Massa even changed his skin from white to black, making this whole freedom thing complicated.”
― Kei Miller, Augustown

“The story of Bedward,’ she says, ‘is not the one they been telling you. Is not the story of some fool-fool man who get it into him head that him could fly. And neither is it the story of a clumsy baff-hand man who fall out of a tree. You hearing me, child? The story of Bedward is something completely different – is the story of a man who try his best to do something big, and to reach higher than any of we did think a man like him could ever reach …”
― Kei Miller, Augustown

“The stone that poor people born with, Irene. Is a stone that sit right on the top of our heads. The one that always stop we from rising”
― Kei Miller, Augustown

“The story of Bedward is not the one they been telling you. Is it not the story of some fool-fool man who get it into him head that him could fly. And neither is it the story of a clumsy baff-hand man who fall out of a tree. You hearing me child? The story of Bedward is something completely different -is the story of a man who try his best to do something big-and to reach higher than any of we did think a man like him could ever had reach….. Then again, is probably just the everyday story of this goddamn island- just another striving man that this blasted country decide to pull down”
― Kei Miller, Augustown

“And so they have marched many more times since August Morning. They have joined every workers' strike, been part of every vigil and every rally, but no march has ever got them to the place they want to reach. Yet they continue, with an almost Sisyphean resolve. They have decided that f they cannot accomplish a mile, then maybe they can accomplish a yard or even an inch. If they cannot accomplish the destination, then at least they will pull closer, closer with every opportunity that presents itself. They will inch slowly towards this elusive place - step by step, lickle bi lickle.”
― Kei Miller, Augustown

“And now everybody get the understanding that Gilzene did get. A man cannot rise on his own. Not even a powerful man like Alexander Bedward. Him did need us. Him did need Augustown. It was we who had to push him up into the sky. It was we who had to show our faith to the governor and everybody else.”
― Kei Miller, Augustown

“This place was no freedom, and Massa Day was not done. Massa had only changed his name. He was no longer "Busha" or "Buckra" or "Massa". He was now "Boss" or "Miss" or "Sergeant." Sometimes Massa even changed his skin from white to black, making this whole freedom thing complicated. There was further to go; a longer journey ahead.”
― Kei Miller, Augustown