Somewhere between retina and object, between vision and view, his eyes draw back, hesitate, and hover. At some fixed point in time and space he senses that he need not waste the effort of a glance. He does not see her, because for him there is nothing to see.
The visionary language of the doomed reaches heights of linguistic ardor with which language of the blessed and saved cannot compete.
Everybody wants the life of a black man. White men want us dead or quiet – which is the same thing as dead. White women, same thing... They won’t even let you risk your own life, man, unless it’s over them. You can’t even die unless it’s about them. What good is a man’s life if he can’t even choose what to die for?
Were we women so frail in the wake of men who swore they cherished us? Was a lover’s betrayal more lethal than betrayal of oneself?
She didn’t even know she had a neck until Jude remarked on it, or that her smile was anything but the spreading of her lips until he saw it as a small miracle.
Lo que tengo que hacer es meterme en la cama y no moverme. Quiero concentrarme en algo que sea inofensivo en este mundo.
To go back to the original hunger was impossible.
I need to use everything – sound, image, performance – to get at the full meaning of the story.
She told them that the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine. That if they could not see it, they would not have it.
Slave life; freed life – everyday was a test and a trial. Nothing could be counted on in a world where even you were a solution you were a problem.
All narrative begins for me as listening. When I read, I listen. When I write, I listen – for silence, inflection, rhythm, rest. Then comes the image, the picture of the thing that I have to invent: the headless bride in her wedding dress; the forest clearing. There is performance, too: “zzz went the saw,” accompanied by gesture. And cadence: “Old man Simon Gillicutty, caaatch me.” I need to use everything – sound, image, performance – to get at the full meaning of the story.
God puzzled her and she was too ashamed of Him to say so.
Yummy food, unique attention, playfulness, or loving sternness – these features are often summoned to sweeten one’s memory of a grandmother.
I suspect that a nonracist, nonsexist, educating press is as profitable as one that is not. I suspect that clarification of difficult issues is just as entertaining as obscuring and reducing them is. But it will take more than an effort of the will to make such a press profitable; it will take imagination, invention, and a strong sense of responsibility and accountability.
Era la selva que los blancos plantaban en ellos.
Fondling their weapons, feeling suddenly so young and good they are reminded that guns are more than decoration, intimidation or comfort. They are meant.
How loose the silk. How quick the jailed up flavor ran free.
Saying more might push them both to a place they couldn’t get back from. He would keep the rest where it belonged: in that tobacco tin buried in his chest where a red heart used to be. Its lid rusted shut.
I refused to explain, or even acknowledge, the “problem” as anything other than an artistic one.
To use folk language, vernacular in a manner neither exotic nor comic, neither minstrelized nor microscopically analyzed.