It is a way of saying you must not live too much in your head. It is a way of reminding you to stay in your emotions, no matter how nutty they are; it is a way of saying, also, that craziness has value.
Because he understood very well what was making her sick. For the first time in her life she had fallen in love at the same time that she had the experience necessary to know it would never work out.
They think, after the biggest of the white folks no longer on the earth, the only way to stop making somebody the serpent is for everybody to accept everybody else as a child of God, or one mother’s children, no matter what they look like or how they act.
God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifest itself even if you not looking, or don’t know what you looking for. Trouble.
That she had seen the magazines we receive from home and that it was very clear to her that black people did not truly admire blackskinned black people like herself, and especially did not admire blackskinned black women. They bleach their faces, she said. They fry their hair. They try to look naked.
I’m thinking of the moment something dies and how we instinctively know it. And of how we try not to know what we know because we do not yet understand how we are to negotiate change.
She thought of how diligently she’d worked to free herself. Difficult because of the shock she was in, discovering she was trapped, captured most of all by possessions.
He is a very sensitive soul who hears what isn’t said as clearly as what is.
Why should the killers of the world be “the future” and not us?
Tashi’s mother and father were just here. They are upset because she spends so much time with Olivia. She is changing, becoming quiet and too thoughtful, they say. She is becoming someone else; her face is beginning to show the spirit of one of her aunts who was sold to the trader because she no longer fit into village life. This aunt refused to marry the man chosen for her. Refused to bow to the chief. Did nothing but lay up, crack cola nuts between her teeth and giggle.
All my life I had to fight... But I never thought I’d have to fight in my own house... I loves Harpo, she say. God knows I do. But I’ll kill him dead before I let him beat me.
Of what was plastic made? What died? He knew it was a product of petroleum, of oil, and so he assumed plastic was made out of the very lifeblood of the planet. When all the oil was drained, he imagined the planet quaking and shrinking in on itself, like a squeezed orange that has been sucked to death. He.
I wish you were with me, or I with you.
It’s worse than unwelcome, said Samuel. The Africans don’t even see us. They don’t even recognize us as the brothers and sisters they sold.
That though the heart is breaking, happiness can exist in a moment, also.
I wash her body, it feels like I’m praying. My hands tremble and my breath short.
She was someone who could not be rushed. This seems a small thing. But it is actually a very amazing quality, a very ancient one. She did everything at just the same pace as before, she could tell the time of day or night by the moisture in the atmosphere, and she went about her business as if she would live forever, and forever was very, very long. That is the kind of mujer my mama was. When you look at me you see her, but I have lost ‘forever’; therefore I sometimes hurry.
There is for human beings no greater hell to fear than the one on earth.
Why us always have family reunion on July 4th, say Henrietta, mouth poke out, full of complaint. It so hot. White people busy celebrating they independence from England July 4th, say Harpo, so most black folks don’t have to work. Us can spend the day celebrating each other.
But I don’t think us feel old at all. And us so happy. Matter of fact, I think this is the youngest us felt.