All Souls' Rising Quotes

“It's a marriage of convenience. Temporarily, so long as our interests coincide, however long it takes to dispose of that mob of petit blancs at Port-au-Prince. Afterward,' he waved his sticky fingers airily, 'everything will return to the way it was before.”
― Madison Smartt Bell, All Souls' Rising

“The cross of Baron Samedi was in this place. Someone had carved it onto a little barrel and strung it up high in one of the thorn trees. But I thought that Ghede did not want these bones. Maybe Jesus didn’t want them either. They were alone like sticks or rocks, sinking into the jungle floor, with leaves falling down to cover them. The vultures and pigs didn’t come anymore, but the butterflies flew over the bones, through the patches of sun that came down through the leaves of the thorn trees.”
― Madison Smartt Bell, All Souls' Rising

“All the same, terror can be a useful instrument,” he said. “So long as it’s used judiciously.”
― Madison Smartt Bell, All Souls' Rising

“Through suicide, infanticide, abortion, starvation, neglect, overwork, and murder, the black slaves of Saint Domingue died off at a much faster rate than they could replace themselves by new births. It was necessary for the proprietors to import twenty thousand fresh slaves from Africa annually in order to maintain the workforce at a constant level.”
― Madison Smartt Bell, All Souls' Rising

“Sixty-four different shades of color were identified (and named) among the mulattoes, and social status depended on the lightness of the shade.”
― Madison Smartt Bell, All Souls' Rising