Poetry teaches us music, metaphor, condensation and specificity.
Freedom for us has always been dangerous. Freedom for us has been a crime as far back as our oldest memories. And so whenever we’re feeling liberation we know that there’s somebody nearby with a rope and a collar, a shotgun and a curse.
It’s a disheartening feeling when you can’t stand the touch of someone but neither can you push them away.
The law is a flexible thing – on both sides of the line – influenced by circumstance, character, and, of course, wealth or lack of same.
Everybody was screaming for joy. That’s what children do – they scream because life is just too much for them but they don’t know it yet.
But I wasn’t there to treat the incurable ills of megalomania.
He made me question what was, when for a whole lifetime up till that moment, I accepted the world’s excuses.
Her experience in life was limited and so she fought battles in an imaginary arena.
People are so afraid of dying that they don’t even live the little bit of life they have.
Making friends has always been hard for me.
One thing I had learned in high school was that in sports you always had to move in a direction that your opponent did not expect. From Ping-Pong to prizefighting, the man with the unexpected moves was the player most likely to win.
When I was a kid,” I said, “I thought that if I worried about every way I could possibly die, then none of them would happen and I’d live forever.
Yeah. If you’ve never been knocked down, then you’ve never been in a fight.
My father once told me that a great man walks the back roads. He does what’s right every day and no one knows it but those lucky enough to be loved by him.
Why did you need to see my ID?” “This is an exclusive service, Mr. Orlean,” she said with no chink of humanity in her face. “And we like to know exactly who it is we’re dealing with.” “Oh,” I said. “So it wasn’t because of my clothes or my race?” “The lower races come in all colors, Mr. Orlean. And none of them get back here.
Men are weak, Mr. Rawlins. They’re strong of arm but frail in their hearts. They need forgiveness more than women do.
Of course, I always knew that there was no real difference between the races, but still, it was nice to see an example of that equality.
The first thing a black man and a poor man learns is that trouble is all he’s got so that’s what he has to work with.
Sometimes you’re hoping that things will be different, that men and women will change over the years and become those good, if hard, folks that the preachers talk about. But it never changes. And if something does get good for a while you could be sure that it will turn sour before you have time to get any real pleasure.
You know, the undersized genius had said, ain’t no way in the world that black folks could’a done enough bad to call all them centuries’a pain down on our heads.
Like most drunks he thought that if he took longer to think he’d come up with the thoughts of a sober man.