Common danger made common friends. Nothing sought a conquest over the other.
He has only heard what I felt.
The town had a basketful of feelings good and bad about Joe’s positions and possessions, but none had the temerity to challenge him. They bowed down to him rather, because he was all of these things, and then again he was all of these things because the town bowed down.
Janie knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one by sun-up. It was wonderful to see it take form with the sun and emerge from the gray dust of its making.
But stillness was the sleep of swords.
They became lords of sounds and lesser things. They passed nations through their mouths. They sat in judgment.
So I do not pray. I accept the means at my disposal for working out my destiny. It seems to me that I have been given a mind and will power for that very purpose.
They made burning statements with questions, and killing tools out of laughs. It was mass cruelty.
Death had found them watching, trying to see beyond seeing.
Mouths don’t empty themselves unless ears are sympathetic and knowing.
She had learned how to talk some and leave some. She was a rut in the road. Plenty of life beneath the surface but it was kept beaten down by the wheels. Sometimes she stuck out into the future, imagining her life different from what it was. But mostly she lived between her hat and her heels, with her emotional disturbances like shade patterns in the woods – come and gone with the sun. She got nothing from Jody except what money could buy, and she was giving away what she didn’t value.
Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men. Now, women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.
Crushing aromatic herbs with every step he took. Spices hung about him. He was a glance from God.
You cannot avoid hearing drums in Haiti.
Perhaps it is natural for the god of the poor to be akin to the god of the dead, for there is something about poverty that smells of death.
The bed was no longer a daisy-field for her and Joe to play in. It was a place where she went and laid down when she was sleepy and tired.
The Fon of Dahomey was foremost among those African peoples who resisted the suppression. Not only was the internal enslavement of their prisoners perceived as essential to their traditions and customs, the external sell of their prisoners afforded their kingdom wealth and political dominance. To maintain a sufficient “slave supply,” the king of Dahomey instigated wars and led raids with.
I found out too that you are bound to be jostled in “the crowded street of life.” That in itself need not be dangerous unless you have the open razors of personal vanity in your pants pocket. The passers-by don’t hurt you, but if you go around like that, they make you hurt yourself.
Dis ain’t no business proposition, and no race after property and titles. Dis is uh love game. Ah done lived Grandma’s way, now Ah means tuh live mine.
De object wuz tuh git dere. So Ah got up on de high stool lak she told me, but Pheoby, Ah done nearly languished tuh death up dere.