We Cast a Shadow Quotes

“Yes, the Founders had meant that all men were created equal, but they failed to include an index of defined terms. Ever since they drafted that screed, no one wanted to admit that Washington, Jefferson, and the rest of those guys meant only to protect the rights of white, landowning men. Through sloppy copyediting, our illustrious forefathers set off the human rights skirmishes that would beset the nation all the way to the present. If any of the seventy-plus delegates at the Constitutional Convention could have bothered to bring along a gray-wigged man of letters or even a lowly print shop owner, the document would have been clearer, so generations of people wouldn’t have spent their lives dreaming of rights they were never meant to have, wrongheadedly attending protests, getting beaten or killed.”
― Maurice Carlos Ruffin, We Cast a Shadow

“felt guilty, of course, but for the love of Meadowlark Lemon, did the world really need another child of the diaspora with highly developed ball skills? The answer was in the question, and I made all indirect efforts to discourage his growing love of sports. America could cheer someone else’s brown boy down a field and, after he’d wrecked body and mind, into an early grave.”
― Maurice Carlos Ruffin, We Cast a Shadow

“A dark-skinned child can expect a life of diminished light.”
― Maurice Carlos Ruffin, We Cast a Shadow

“My family, Araminta and Nigel, were in the middle of this hell.”
― Maurice Carlos Ruffin, We Cast a Shadow

“Three quarters of Fate’s work was done in our reaction to the world.”
― Maurice Carlos Ruffin, We Cast a Shadow

“She adopted this style occasionally, and I found it adorable.”
― Maurice Carlos Ruffin, We Cast a Shadow

“It would be proof of my involvement—of the firm’s involvement—in the lives of the black community.”
― Maurice Carlos Ruffin, We Cast a Shadow

“His body-side ear was almost over Penny’s shoulder.”
― Maurice Carlos Ruffin, We Cast a Shadow

“Quick,” I said. “Don’t let those bugs in the house.”
― Maurice Carlos Ruffin, We Cast a Shadow

“it seemed as if the country were turning away from the old troubles of systemic racial oppression.”
― Maurice Carlos Ruffin, We Cast a Shadow

“I liked classical pop,”
― Maurice Carlos Ruffin, We Cast a Shadow

“Nigel saluted. “Aye-aye, XO.”
― Maurice Carlos Ruffin, We Cast a Shadow

“What you selling today, money?” I asked in light Ebonics.”
― Maurice Carlos Ruffin, We Cast a Shadow

“As soon as Mama announced that I could no longer just give Sharane half our stock, the girl’s presence became scarce. For my part, I lost my taste for eating fried chicken around then. And for years afterward, I suffered nocturnal indigestion every July 6, National Fried Chicken Day.”
― Maurice Carlos Ruffin, We Cast a Shadow

“After all, her family had owned that mansion on the Avenue of Streetcars since before recorded time.”
― Maurice Carlos Ruffin, We Cast a Shadow

“My wistfulness wasn’t the result of a pharmacologically induced state. I hadn’t had a Plum since the morning, although it was high time.”
― Maurice Carlos Ruffin, We Cast a Shadow

“Sugar,” she said, “every schoolboy knows the Civil War didn’t start because of slavery. That was just spin Lincoln’s cronies put out to keep the Europeans from joining the Confederacy. Read a book.”
― Maurice Carlos Ruffin, We Cast a Shadow

“high-country accent.”
― Maurice Carlos Ruffin, We Cast a Shadow

“Old Miss’s pouting room.”
― Maurice Carlos Ruffin, We Cast a Shadow

“In my thinking, the entire South beyond my hometown was just one sprawling countryside of ectoplasmic Colonel Sanderses on horseback chasing runaway spirits until the Rapture.”
― Maurice Carlos Ruffin, We Cast a Shadow

“It’s a strange thing to feel so alive even as a part of your soul turns to cold green goo and oozes out of your heel.”
― Maurice Carlos Ruffin, We Cast a Shadow

“the band stuttered into a dark tribal beat. Not the kind of rhythm that rock and roll was built on, but the kind of rhythm that predated bluesuederockaroundtheclockpleasepleasefightforyourrighttoparty by at least a thousand years.”
― Maurice Carlos Ruffin, We Cast a Shadow

“After all, what was equality other than a typographical error in the Constitution?”
― Maurice Carlos Ruffin, We Cast a Shadow

“Do not dwell on it. After all, the place you dwell is the place you live. Shame is no proper residence.”
― Maurice Carlos Ruffin, We Cast a Shadow

“If any of the seventy-plus delegates at the Constitutional Convention could have bothered to bring along a gray-wigged man of letters or even a lowly print shop owner, the document would have been clearer, so generations of people wouldn’t have spent their lives dreaming of rights they were never meant to have, wrongheadedly attending protests, getting beaten or killed.”
― Maurice Carlos Ruffin, We Cast a Shadow

“Not a single volume out of place on the bookshelf, where titles by Du Bois and Nikki Giovanni reminded me that the intense study of these problems did not mean a better future was on the way”
― Maurice Carlos Ruffin, We Cast a Shadow

“I guessed that people like this nurse’s ancestors were history’s victors, the lucky souls who had avoided the Middle Passage and miscegenation. Coffee never diluted by creamer.”
― Maurice Carlos Ruffin, We Cast a Shadow

“White people ain’t no more evil than the next man, and don’t let nobody tell you they are. But white folk radioactive, too. Because they got the top card and always will. ’Cause they glow in the dark, they can’t help but hurt you like what make cancer. You get me?”
― Maurice Carlos Ruffin, We Cast a Shadow

“The world is a centrifuge that patiently waits to separate my Nigel from his basic human dignity. I don’t have to tell you that this is an unjust planet.”
― Maurice Carlos Ruffin, We Cast a Shadow

“You wearing that fine suit now, but give it some time. They’ll have you in a butler getup before too long. That’s when you’ll see.”
― Maurice Carlos Ruffin, We Cast a Shadow