Promise Boys Quotes

“It’s how we keep our heads above water in a world that’s so incredibly dangerous for us. We notice everything, take stock of possible threats, and lock it all in our memory.”
― Nick Brooks, Promise Boys: A Blockbuster YA Mystery Thriller

“It’s always the quiet ones.” The whole damn school was quiet. Moore made us that way. Any of us could be the killer when you put it that way.”
― Nick Brooks, Promise Boys: A Blockbuster YA Mystery Thriller

“Black men don't get second chances, yet Trey got one with me. I couldn't let him waste it.”
― Nick Brooks, Promise Boys

“He looks intimidating to some people, so that means they automatically cast him as the villain in that bad movie I was talking about. And me? People see me—Black, pretty, smart—and they cast me as someone whose feelings don’t matter. Like I’m made of steel and they can do whatever they want to me.”
― Nick Brooks, Promise Boys: A Blockbuster YA Mystery Thriller

“Sharing your dreams with folks from the hood was always risky because most people don’t believe in the same possibilities I do.”
― Nick Brooks, Promise Boys: A Blockbuster YA Mystery Thriller

“I’ve noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my twenty-five years of teaching—that schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers do care and do work very hard, the institution is psychopathic—it has no conscience.”
― Nick Brooks, Promise Boys

“Where I come from, men laugh and dance and hug each other. It's our culture. Why does Principal Moore want to strip it away?”
― Nick Brooks, Promise Boys - Drei Schüler. Drei Motive. Ein Mord.

“And J.B. Williamson is on a year-long road trip with his high school sweetheart, Keyana Glenn. They deferred college for a year—she, law; he, musical composition—while they explore the country together.”
― Nick Brooks, Promise Boys: A Blockbuster YA Mystery Thriller

“Ramón Zambrano, founder of the SCI program here at Promise—which remains one of the most popular and well-regarded programs in the district—received a full ride to the Sullivan School of Culinary Arts, where he is preparing for a career as a chef. Trey Jackson graduated as the top-scoring senior in the district and now plays basketball at the D1 level, majoring in computer science.”
― Nick Brooks, Promise Boys: A Blockbuster YA Mystery Thriller

“I started following him outside of our sessions. Moore was unraveling. He was stealing money from the fund.”
― Nick Brooks, Promise Boys: A Blockbuster YA Mystery Thriller

“Inside Promise’s walls, Moore was king, and no one challenged him. Inside a kingdom, the king can say or do no wrong. When you hear about a king being toppled, like in Game of Thrones, the threat often comes from inside the kingdom.”
― Nick Brooks, Promise Boys: A Blockbuster YA Mystery Thriller

“This kind of murder is about power,” he says. “When powerful men are killed, it’s always about power. A lot of dudes from the streets go to Promise. Somebody wanted Moore to know he wasn’t really the king.”
― Nick Brooks, Promise Boys: A Blockbuster YA Mystery Thriller

“Which honestly, fuck Moore, but I was rooting for him that day, because Ennis is such an asshole. The type to want his name put up on a wall or a bench.”
― Nick Brooks, Promise Boys: A Blockbuster YA Mystery Thriller

“It’s like everybody thinks they’re the damn cops now: making up scenarios, building out all these elaborate plots of my plans to murder Principal Moore. Why does nobody dedicate that creative energy to, I don’t know . . . coming up with theories of how I didn’t do”
― Nick Brooks, Promise Boys: A Blockbuster YA Mystery Thriller

“No matter what, everyone already thinks I’m guilty. But what’s new? In this world it feels like I always have guilty painted on my back. This time it’s just written in blood.”
― Nick Brooks, Promise Boys: A Blockbuster YA Mystery Thriller

“Uncle T has a serious drinking problem. I know he was a marine, and I think sometimes he still thinks he is.”
― Nick Brooks, Promise Boys: A Blockbuster YA Mystery Thriller

“A tweak here, a tweak there, and before you know it, I realized we were herding boys like cattle. They weren’t kids anymore, they were prisoners.”
― Nick Brooks, Promise Boys: A Blockbuster YA Mystery Thriller

“Still, even if he’s innocent, I think this’ll ruin him. I think it’ll traumatize him, and I think that’s the flaw of the system. Once it touches you, you tainted forever, guilty or not. Same thing happened to me.”
― Nick Brooks, Promise Boys: A Blockbuster YA Mystery Thriller

“I really hope Trey ain’t take my gun. For my sake and his. I mean, Trey’s a lot of things, but he isn’t dumb. And he isn’t a killer. I know ’cause I am.”
― Nick Brooks, Promise Boys: A Blockbuster YA Mystery Thriller

“That white man loves ruining people’s days. Never seems to acknowledge he’s not like us. Like some of the other teachers,”
― Nick Brooks, Promise Boys: A Blockbuster YA Mystery Thriller

“don’t want Keyana to have a life like my mom. She deserves better. That’s why I work so hard in school, so I’ll be able to take care of my mom and my future wife.”
― Nick Brooks, Promise Boys: A Blockbuster YA Mystery Thriller

“But more than all of that, Keyana wants the same thing I do: a chance to make it out of Benning Terrace and do something big. Something better than all the folks we see at home.”
― Nick Brooks, Promise Boys: A Blockbuster YA Mystery Thriller

“Weird. Are you supposed to drink all that wine when having a baby? But my mom would say to mind my business.”
― Nick Brooks, Promise Boys: A Blockbuster YA Mystery Thriller

“Those poor boys. So full of anger. It’s because of their life circumstances though, right? I mean, imagine if you lived in poverty, were racially profiled, and a victim of systemic inequity.”
― Nick Brooks, Promise Boys: A Blockbuster YA Mystery Thriller

“Principal Moore created a boiling pot of toxic masculinity and male fragility.”
― Nick Brooks, Promise Boys: A Blockbuster YA Mystery Thriller