Before I Forget Quotes

“For the first time in his life, the very first time in his life, he hated her.

Or he tried to, at least. Tried mightily. But it is a hell of a thing to hate your own mother, to hate where you came from, to hate what succored you and nourished you when you could not do it for yourself. A hell of a thing to hate that, even when it hates you, even when it calls you a nothing, calls you garbage and tells you to throw yourself away. Because even then, she is still your mother.”
― Leonard Pitts Jr., Before I Forget

“Sometimes, yesterday says goodbye to you.”
― Leonard Pitts Jr., Before I Forget

“Love is a powerful tie, son. At the end, it's the thing that pulls us back together when everything else has pulled us apart.”
― Leonard Pitts Jr., Before I Forget

“Whoever said the truth sets you free never told the truth.”
― Leonard Pitts Jr., Before I Forget

“That's funny, isn't it, how you can know him one way and we can know him some way completely different. Funny how a person can contradict their own self.”
― Leonard Pitts Jr., Before I Forget

“He had not known until that moment that your heart can break with love, that it can fill with such inexpressible tenderness till you just about can't stand it anymore.”
― Leonard Pitts Jr., Before I Forget

“It don't matter none where you start in life. What matters is where you finish.”
― Leonard Pitts Jr., Before I Forget

“Everything that lived, died.”
― Leonard Pitts Jr., Before I Forget

“To lose your memory is not just to lose everything you have. It's to lose everything you are. It's to lose your very self. What are you without the things you remember.”
― Leonard Pitts Jr., Before I Forget

“You could get lost in and never care about finding your way back.”
― Leonard Pitts Jr., Before I Forget

“He was numb from aching. And from fear.”
― Leonard Pitts Jr., Before I Forget

“You think you've reached the bottom. Then you find out the bottom has a basement.”
― Leonard Pitts Jr., Before I Forget

“Numb. He felt everything. He couldn't feel anything.”
― Leonard Pitts Jr., Before I Forget

“Don't nobody like a man they can't figure.”
― Leonard Pitts Jr., Before I Forget

“It occurred to Mo that he didn't have any pictures of himself as a boy. Every photo he owned, every memento of his life, was from after. It was as if he had been born the day he left. He had gone out from here and invented himself.”
― Leonard Pitts Jr., Before I Forget

“They drove through the intersection and turned left on a street Mo had once known like his favorite song. It was strange to him now and he wondered if that was because of the disease or just the natural effect of change itself, the tendency of things to move around on you, to shift when you weren't looking. So that you could get back and be a stranger in your own places.”
― Leonard Pitts Jr., Before I Forget

“You could never tell if he was with you or not, so Cooley liked to talk to him just in case. Just to remind them both that this was still a human being. He never wanted to catch himself treating Jack like a thing, a chore to be done.”
― Leonard Pitts Jr., Before I Forget

“Trying to get stuff straight right at the end when you never cared all through your life. Trying to get into heaven on the affirmative action plan.”
― Leonard Pitts Jr., Before I Forget