Quotes from Wench

Dolen Perkins-Valdez ·  290 pages

Rating: (14.3K votes)


“My children ain’t the only thing I love. If I was allowed, I reckon I’d love myself, too.”
― Dolen Perkins-Valdez, quote from Wench


“At night, before she went to sleep in her cabin down in the quarters, she remembered Mawu’s story and told herself that she was a god, a powerful god. Each and every day, she reminded herself of this so that she wouldn’t fall backward. She was more than eyes, ears, lips, and thigh. She was a heart. She was a mind”
― Dolen Perkins-Valdez, quote from Wench


“The woman had told the truth. The flowers were the color of sunset. And not the yellowish tinge of a lazy sun either, but the intense orange of a sun refusing to set on anyone else’s terms.”
― Dolen Perkins-Valdez, quote from Wench


“Mawu felt her face where the still-fresh scar had just been opened up again. She examined the blood on her fingers as if it weren’t her own. Sir returned to the table and a servant slipped through the side door and passed him a wet cloth to wipe the blood from his hands.”
― Dolen Perkins-Valdez, quote from Wench


“plans if you were going to go with this woman? come here.”
― Dolen Perkins-Valdez, quote from Wench



“Sweet allowed her pregnancy to get the better of her and simply sat down. Reenie’s lips set into a straight, emotionless line. Mawu no longer talked back, the words she did speak taking on an air of vapidity. Philip was chained at night, no longer trusted. So it was no wonder that Lizzie sought out the white woman then.”
― Dolen Perkins-Valdez, quote from Wench


“What is the denunciation with which we are charged? It is endeavoring, in our faltering human speech, to declare the enormity of the sin of making merchandise of men,—of separating husband and wife,—taking the infant from its mother, and selling the daughter to prostitution,—of a professedly Christian nation denying, by statute, the Bible to every sixth man and woman of its population, and making it illegal for ‘two or three’ to meet together, except a white man be present! What is this harsh criticism of motives with which we are charged?”
― Dolen Perkins-Valdez, quote from Wench


About the author

Dolen Perkins-Valdez
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“We come to the New Testament, where again a host of imperative verbs is mustered in support of that miserable bondage of free-choice, and the aid of carnal Reason with her inferences and similes is called in, just as in a picture or a dream you might see the King of the flies with his lances of straw and shields of hay arrayed against a real and regular army of seasoned human troops. That is how the human dreams of Diatribe go to war with the battalions of divine words.”
― Martin Luther, quote from The Bondage of the Will


“Memories which someday will become all beautiful when the last annoyance that encumbers them shall have faded out of our minds.”
― Mark Twain, quote from The Innocents Abroad


“For the first time, she did want more. She did not know what she wanted, knew that it was dangerous and that she should rest content with what she had, but she knew an emptiness deep inside her, which began to ache.”
― Iain Pears, quote from The Dream of Scipio


“If I had a theme song it would probably be “B-Boys Makin’ with the Freak Freak” by the Beastie Boys.”
― Teresa Medeiros, quote from Goodnight Tweetheart


“Because what is civilized life but an imposition of unreal standards upon flawed and defective human beings by other human beings no less flawed and defective?”
― Winston Graham, quote from The Angry Tide


Interesting books

Demon Girl
(6.3K)
Demon Girl
by Penelope Fletcher
Tweak: Growing Up On Methamphetamines
(25.9K)
Tweak: Growing Up On...
by Nic Sheff
The FitzOsbornes in Exile
(2.7K)
The Little Giant of Aberdeen County
(10K)
The Little Giant of...
by Tiffany Baker
Safe Harbor
(10.4K)
Safe Harbor
by Christine Feehan
The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter and Miracles
(8K)
The Biology of Belie...
by Bruce H. Lipton

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.