Most times I don’t know what I’m doing. Sometimes I feel like I don’t hardly know enough to tie my own shoes.
He felt like a radio tuning in to a new channel, one that was beginning to fuzz into range, slowly coming in clear, proper, the way his Hettie had always wanted him to be. The new feeling humbled him.
I didn’t make head nor tails of what he was saying, for I was to learn that Old John Brown could work the Lord into just about any aspect of his comings and goings in life, including using the privy. That’s one reason I weren’t a believer, having been raised by my Pa, who was a believer and a lunatic, and them things seemed to run together.
Son, a blessing favors them that needs it. Don’t matter how it comes. It just matters that it does.
You ain’t got to worry about your skin.” “I do worries about my skin. It covers my body.
What hair she had looked like scrambled eggs in string form, in wild clumps and in single strands, giving her the appearance of a wired, harried, ancient, terrified professor.
Man hates. Animals don’t hate. You been in the zoo too long, Rubs. Who could hate old Rubs? Hate you because you’re scared of something? We’re all scared of something, Rubs. Just remember every fear that lives inside makes you smaller. But when you air your fears, they disappear.” “How’s that?
Ain’t no worse thing in the world than fronting up against one of those, for a man with a cause, right or wrong, has got plenty to prove, and will make you suck sorrow if you get in the way of ’em wrongly.
There ain’t nothing gets a Yankee madder than a smart colored person, of which I reckon they figured there was only one in the world, Mr. Douglass.
Booze, he thought. I chose booze over my Moonflower.
The woman, he thought, was all good handwriting.
White folks got insane after the Old Man done his bit, they went on a rampage and attacked coloreds for miles. They was scared outta their minds. I reckon in some fashion, they ain’t been the same since.
I been around the sun one hundred four whole times and nobody’s explained nothing to me.
The Old Man was a lunatic, but he was a good, kind lunatic, and he couldn’t no more be a sane man in his transactions with his fellow white man than you and I can bark like a dog, for he didn’t speak their language. He was a Bible man. A God man. Crazy as a bedbug. Pure to the truth, which will drive any man off his rocker. But at least he knowed he was crazy. At least he knowed who he was. That’s more than I could say for myself.
Instead, she threw her head back and laughed, displaying a mouth full of gums and one sole yellow tooth, which stood out like a clump of butter on a plate.
Nothing in the world is normal,” he said. “I can’t understand why you’d even hope for that.” His comment sent the anger hissing out of her like a balloon, and her features softened. She eyed him with curiosity, then wiped the edge of her eye with the back of her hand and shifted her weight.
To not take sides was to take sides.
You mean the nice little white man who sings? With the puppets?” “That’s Mister Rogers’s address. One forty-three. You know what one forty-three means?” “No, Soup.” His stoic face folded into a smile. “I would tell you, but I don’t wanna spoil it.
The Star-Spangled Banner,’” she scoffed. “I never did like that old lying, lollygagging, hypocritical, warring-ass drinking song. With the bombs bursting in air and so forth.
As Sausage recounted it in the basement that night, it was as if her own future were being revealed, unrolling itself before her like a carpet, one whose design and weave changed as it stretched out ahead.