American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin Quotes

“When the wound is deep, the healing is heroic. Suffering and ascendance require the same work.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“You will never assassinate my ghosts.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“It's not the bad people who are brave I fear, it's the good people who are afraid.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“Give the world half of what Nina Simone gave it, and you have lived an exceptional life.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“I'm a time lord. My armor is flesh and spirit. I carry a flag bearing a different nation on each side. I carry money bearing the face of my assassins.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“I remember my sister’s last hoorah.
She joined all the black people I’m tired of losing,
All the dead from parts of Florida, Ferguson,
Brooklyn, Charleston, Cleveland, Chicago,
Baltimore, wherever the names alive are
Like the names in graves. I am someone
With a good memory & better imagination.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“No one
Mentions Jesus' sister. Nothing is written
About her. She had no children, she was in her
Forties the first time she turned water into wine.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“Assassin, you are a mystery / To me, I say to my reflection sometimes”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“If you think a hammer is the only way to hammer / A nail, you ain't thought of the nail correctly.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“Assassin, you are a mystery to me, I say to my reflection sometimes. You are beautiful because of your sadness, but you would be more beautiful without your fear.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“It’s not the bad people who are brave I fear, it’s the good people who are afraid.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“Glad someone shot deserved to be shot finally,
George Wallace. After you send your basket of balms
And berries for the girls the bomb buried in Birmingham,
After you add your palms to the psalms & palm covered
Caskets of the girls the bomb buried in Birmingham,
I’ll muster a pinch of prayer for you. You are the blind
Protagonist of a story that begins, “In my previous life
My work involved returning runaway slaves to slavery,”
And ends with the image of a black nurse pushing
Your old ass in a wheelchair. Can you guess what black
Folk passing empty cotton fields feel, George Wallace?
I damn you with the opposite of that feeling. I keep thinking
I’m confessing for the first time, the reason I fear you,
And you keep asking why I’m telling this old story again.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“Suppose you could speak nothing but money
And acrimony. Suppose all the sunflowers
Van Gogh destroyed, all the stones in Virginia’s
Pockets & all the stones Georgia painted as vaginas
Were simply a matter of making something greater
Than money. Prince taught us a real man has
A beautiful woman in him. Suppose we cannot
Forget what happened in Money. Suppose
You’re someone who celebrates Thomas Jefferson’s
Birthday. Suppose he was someone whose love
For a black woman was blinded by blackness,
Hers & his, yours & mine. I ain’t mad at you,
Assassin. It’s not the bad people who are brave
I fear, it’s the good people who are afraid.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“Sometimes
Is a good answer to any existential question.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“In this we may be alike, Assassin, you & me: we believe
We want what’s best for humanity. I'll probably survive
Dancing with the kinds of people who must find refuge
Among the sweat & rancor of a Fish & Chicken Shack
But Assassin, they'll probably murder you. Do you ask,
Why you should die for me if I will not die for you? I do.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“Nothing saddens me more
Than Nigger, one whose master has no Lord.
No word leaves me more graced by shame.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“It feels sadder when a black person says Nigga
Because it sounds like Nigger.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“The man was high yellow
In public, afraid of himself, pretending his music
Was material when in fact, it was the opposite:
Like a breath that comes so quickly you know
You’re breathing ether: either atmospheric
And anonymous as the air against a window,
Or indefinite & mute as a curtain of wind.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“Something happens everywhere in this country
Every day. Someone is praying, someone is prey.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“Probably all our encounters are existential
Jambalaya. Which is to say, can a nigga survive?”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“Goddamn, so this is what it means to have a leader
You despise, the racists said when the president
Was black and I’ll be damned if I ain’t saying it too.
Is this a mandate for whiteness, virility, sovereignty,
Stupidity, an idiot’s threats & gangsta narcissisms threading
Every shabby sentence his trumpet constructs?”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“I live a life
That burns a hole through life, that leaves a scar for life,
That makes me weep for another life. Define life.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“America, you just wanted change is all, a return
To the kind of awe experiences after beholding a reign
Of gold. A leader whose metallic narcissism is a reflection
Of your own.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“Christianity is a religion built around a father
Who does not rescue his son. It is the story
Of a son whose father is a ghost.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“Probably, ghosts are allergic to us. Our uproarious
Breathing & ruckus. Our eruptions, our disregard
For dust.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“Even the most kindhearted white woman,
Dragging herself through traffic with her nails
On the wheel & her head in a chamber of black
Modern American music may begin, almost
Carelessly, to breathe n-words. Yes, even the most
Bespectacled hallucination cruising the lanes
Of America may find her tongue curls inward,
Entangling her windpipe, her vents, toes & pedals
When she drives alone. Even the most made up
Layers of persona in a two- or four-door vehicle
Sealed in a fountain of bass & black boys
Chanting n-words may begin to chant inwardly
Softly before she can catch herself. Of course,
After that, what is inward, is absorbed.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“Are you not the color of this country's current threat
Advisory?”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“Possibly twilight makes blackness dangerous
Darkness. Probably all my encounters
Are existential jambalaya. Which is to say,
A nigga can survive. Something happened
In Sanford, something happened in Ferguson
And Brooklyn & Charleston, something happened
In Chicago & Cleveland & Baltimore & happens
Almost everywhere in this country every day.
Probably someone is prey in all of our encounters.
You won't admit it. The names alive are like the names
In graves.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“My hunch is that Sylvia Plath was not
Especially fun company. A drama queen, thin-skinned,
And skittery, she thought her poems were ordinary.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“Our sermon today concerns the dialectic Blessings in transgression & transcendence.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin