Sometimes she stuck out into the future, imagining her life different from what is was.
Being under my own roof, and my personality not invaded by others makes a lot of difference in my outlook on life and everything. Oh, to be once more alone in a house!
At the bottom in the gut of jazz if you listen closely you can hear – no matter how complexly, obliquely, mysteriously stylized – somebody talking, crying, growling, singing, farting, praying, stomping, voicing in all those modes through which our bodies communicate some tale about how it feels to be here on earth or leaving, or about the sweet pain of hanging on between the coming and going.
We Afficans try raise our chillun right. When dey say we ign’nant we go together and build de school house. Den de county send us a teacher. We Afficky men doan wait lak de other colored people till de white folks gittee ready to build us a school. We build one for ourself den astee de county to send us de teacher.
Janie starched and ironed her face and came set in the funeral behind her veil. It was like a wall of stone and steel. The funeral was going on outside. All things concerning death and burial were said and done. Finish. End. Never-more. Darkness. Deep hole. Dissolution. Eternity. Weeping and wailing outside. Inside the expensive black folds were resurrection and life.
I did not know then, as I know now, that people are prone to build a statue of the kind of person it pleases them to be. And few people want to be forced to ask themselves, “What is there is no me like my statue?” The thing to do is to grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear.
The sun was gone, but he had left his footprints in the sky. It was the time for sitting on porches beside the road.
The one who makes the idols never worships them, however tenderly he might have molded the clay. You cannot have knowledge and worship at the same time. Mystery is the essence of divinity. Gods must keep their distances from men.
That though the heart is breaking, happiness can exist in a moment, also. And because the moment in which we live is all the time there really is, we can keep going.
De wife she de eyes to de man’s soul. How kin I see now, when I ain’ gottee de eyes no mo’?
All these words from the seller, but not one word from the sold. The Kings and Captains whose words moved ships. But not one word from the cargo. The thoughts of the “black ivory,” the “coin of Africa,” had no market value. Africa’s ambassadors to the New World have come and worked and died, and left their spoor, but no recorded thought.
Ah done been tuh de horizon and back and now Ah kin set heah in mah house and live by comparisons.
They sat on the boarding house porch and saw the sun plunge into the same crack in the earth from which the night emerged.
Janie, Ah hope God may kill me, if Ah’m lyin’. Nobody else on earth kin hold uh candle tuh you, baby. You got de keys to de kingdom.
Jump at the sun. You might not land on the sun, but at least you’ll get off the ground.
Janie full of that oldest human longing – self-revelation.
Once upon uh time, Ah never ’spected nothin’, Tea Cake, but bein’ dead from the standin’ still and tryin’ tuh laugh. But you come ’long and made somethin’ outa me. So Ah’m thankful fuh anything we come through together.” “Thanky, Ma’am.
They made burning statements with questions, and killing tools out of laughs. It was mass cruelty. A mood come alive. Words walking without master...
It looked so quiet and peaceful around. But the stillness was the sleep of swords.
She must talk to a man who was ten immensities away.