Devil in a Blue Dress

The law," he continued, "is made by the rich people so that the poor people can't get ahead...

A man once told me that you step out of your door in the morning, and you are already in trouble. The only question is, are you on top of that trouble or not?

Chirren is the most dangerous creatures on the earth, with the exception of young girls between the ages of fifteen and forty-two.

That was why so many Jews back then understood the American Negro; in Europe the Jew had been a Negro for more than a thousand years.

He said that a men's work cloths are the only real cloths he has.

I tried to look stupid; it wasn’t very difficult.

Junior hated anybody who he thought was doing better than he was. Junior hated everybody.

California was like heaven for the Southern Negro. People told stories of how you could eat fruit right off the trees and get enough work to retire one day. The stories were true for the most part but the truth wasn’t like the dream. Life was still hard in L.A. and if you worked every day you still found yourself on the bottom. But being on the bottom didn’t feel so bad if you could come to John’s now and then and remember how it felt back home in Texas, dreaming about California. Sitting there and drinking John’s scotch you could remember the dreams you once had and, for a while, it felt like you had them for real.

I ate with them and slept with them, and I killed enough blue-eyed young men to know that they were just as afraid to die as I was.

We all owe out something, Easy. When you owe out then you're in debt and when you're in debt then you can't be your own man. That's capitalism.

What if' is fo' chirrens, Easy. You's a man.

She got evil in every pocket.

It was a habit I developed in Texas when I was a boy. Sometimes, when a white man of authority would catch me off guard, I’d empty my head of everything so I was unable to say anything. “The less you know, the less trouble you find,” they used to say. I hated myself for it but I also hated white people, and colored people too, for making me that way.

The law,” he continued, “is made by the rich people so that the poor people can’t get ahead. You don’t want to get mixed up with the law and neither do I.

I often think of how so many people have walked into my life for just a few minutes and kicked up some dust, then they’re gone away. My father was like that; my mother wasn’t much better.

The stories were true for the most part but the truth wasn't like the dream.

Careful don’t hurt, Easy. Careful keep your hands up, careful makes ya strong.” “So he’s just a businessman, huh?” I asked again. “That’s right!” “And just exactly what kind of business is it he does? I mean, is he a shirt salesman or what?” “They gotta sayin’ for his line’a work, Ease.” “What’s that?” “Whatever the market can bear.” He smiled, looking like a hungry bear himself. “Whatever the market can bear.” “I’ll think about it.

Somewhere along the way I had developed the feeling that I wasn’t going to outlive the adventure I was having. There was no way out but to run, and I couldn’t run, so I decided to milk all those white people for all the money they’d let go of. Money bought everything. Money paid the rent and fed the kitty. Money was why Coretta was dead and why DeWitt Albright was going to kill me. I got the idea, somehow, that if I got enough money then maybe I could buy my own life back.

often think of how so many people have walked into my life for just a few minutes and kicked up some dust, then they’re gone away.

He once told me that they’d have to wake him for his execution because “the Mouse ain’t gonna miss his rest.

Every time he slammed his body against the wire fence the jay started as if he were about to fly off, but he didn’t. He just kept staring down into those deadly jaws, mesmerized by the spectacle there.

He use’ to play till the cock crowed, but that ole cock don’t crow nearly so much no mo’.

A job in a factory is an awful lot like working on a plantation in the South. The bosses see all the workers like they’re children, and everyone knows how lazy children are.