“There are some words that once spoken will split the world in two. There would be the life before you breathed them and then the altered life after they'd been said. They take a long time to find, words like that. They make you hesitate. Choose with care. Hold on to them unspoken for as long as you can just so your world will stay intact.”
― Andrea Levy, quote from Small Island
“He looked so pained that I dreamed of taking his hands and making him dance”
― Andrea Levy, quote from Small Island
“Describe snow to someone who's lived in the desert. Depict the colour blue for a blind man. Almost impossible to fashion the word.”
― Andrea Levy, quote from Small Island
“Paved with gold, no - but, yes, diamonds appear on the ground in the rain”
― Andrea Levy, quote from Small Island
“Why you wan' the whole world when ya have a likkle piece a hope here? Stay. Stay and fight, man. Fight till you look 'pon what you wan' see.”
― Andrea Levy, quote from Small Island
“Gilbert: How Clark Gable turn every women's head so? Foolish young English girls would see a movie star in every GI with the same Yankee-doodle voice. Glamour in US privates named Jed, Buck or Chip, with their easy-come-by-gifts and Uncle Sam sweet-talk. Dreamboats in hooligans from Delaware or Arizona with fingernails that still carried soil from home, and eyes that crossed with any attempt at reading. Heart-throbs from men like those in the tea-shop, who dated their very close relatives and knew cattle as their mental equal.”
― Andrea Levy, quote from Small Island
“There are some words that once spoken will split the world in two. There would be the life before you breathed them and then the altered life after they'd been said. They take a long time to find, words like that. They make you hesitate. Choose with care.”
― Andrea Levy, quote from Small Island
“No, no, no, no. Don't get carried away, man. One thaw is not the summer.”
― Andrea Levy, quote from Small Island
“A mass whose desperation made them seem like the feckless, and whose drab presence drained the classroom of all colours until even the white potties at the corner glinted like diamonds. I will never forgive Hitler for turning human beings into that.”
― Andrea Levy, quote from Small Island
“Love them to death. Sookie to Pam”
― Charlaine Harris, quote from All Together Dead
“Sara waited a respectful time, knowing there was nothing she could do to ease the woman's pain. Grief was a place, Sara understood, where a person went alone. It was like a room without doors, and what happened in that room, all the anger and the pain you felt, was meant to stay there, nobody's business but yours.”
― Justin Cronin, quote from The Passage
“As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from A Moveable Feast
“- Deitei-me diante da tua lareira e falei contigo sobre a tua vida. - disse. Não tinha nada a ver com o assunto.
-Humm... Sim. Fizemos isso.
- Recordo o nosso duche juntos.
- Também fizemos isso.
- Fizemos tanta coisa.
- Ah... pois. Está bem.
- Se não tivesse tanta coisa para fazer aqui em Shreveport, sentir-me-ia tentado a visitar-te para te recordar como gostaste de cada uma dessas coisas.
- Se bem me lembro - afirmei -, também gostaste.
- Ó, sim.
- Eric, preciso de desligar. Tenho de ir trabalhar. - Ou de entrar em combustão espontânea. O que acontecesse primeiro.”
― Charlaine Harris, quote from From Dead to Worse
“White ain't nothing.'
Mama's grip did not lessen. 'It is something, Cassie. White is something just like black is something. Everybody born on this Earth is something, and nobody, no matter what color is better than anybody else.'
'Then how come Mr. Simms don't know that.'
'Because he's one of those people who has to believe that white people are better than black people to make himself feel big.'
I stared questionably at Mama, not really understanding.
Mama squeezed my hadn't and explained further, 'You see, Cassie, many years ago, when our people were fist brought from Africa in chains to work as slaves in this country--'
'Like Big Ma's Papa and Mama?'
Mama nodded. "Yes, baby. Like Papa Luke and Mama Rachel. Except they were born right here is Mississippi, but their grandparents were born in Africa. And when they came, there was some white people who thought that is was wrong for any people to be slaves. So the people who needed slaves to work in their fields and the people who were making money bringing slaves from Africa preached that black people weren't really people like white people were, so slavery was all right. They also said that slavery was good for us because it thought us to be good Christians, like the white people.'
She sighed deeply, her voice fading into a distant whisper, 'But they didn't teach us Christianity to save our souls, but to teach us obedience. They were afraid of slave revolts and they wanted us to learn the Bible's teachings about slaves being loyal to their masters. But even teaching Christianity didn't make us stop wanting to be free, and many slaves ran away.”
...
She was silent for a moment, then went on. 'Well, after a while, slavery became so profitable to people who had slaves and even to those who didn't that most people started to believe that black people weren't really people like everybody else. And when the Civil War was fought, and Mama Rachel and Papa Luke and all the other slaves were freed, people continued to think that way. Even the Northeners who fought the war didn't really see us equal to white people.
'So, now, even though seventy years have passed since slavery, most white people still think of us as they did then, that we're not as good as they are. And people like Mr. Simms hold onto that belief harder than some other folks because they have little else to hold onto. For him to believe that he is better than we are makes him think that he's important, simply because he's white.”
― Mildred D. Taylor, quote from Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
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