Quotes about Struggle

God take what He would, she said. And He did, and He did, and He did and then gave her Halle who gave her freedom when it didn't mean a thing.

Her color is a cross she will always carry.

Things got better but I still had to be careful. Very careful in how I raised her. I had to be strict, very strict. Lula Ann needed to learn how to behave, how to keep her head down and not to make trouble. I don't care how many times she changes her name. Her color is a cross she will always carry. But it's not my fault. It's not my fault. It's not my fault. It's not. Bride I'm scared.

When I woke up I reminded myself that freedom is never free. You have to fight for it. Work for it and make sure you are able to handle it. Now

Not know it was hard;knowing it was harder

Tough shit, buddy. Your tough shit...

there was no bad luck in the world but whitepeople. 'They don't know when to stop,' she said, and returned to her bed, pulled up the quilt and left them to hold that thought forever.

Well, it probably won't live. They say the way her mama beat her she lucky to be alive herself. She be lucky if it don't live. Bound to be the ugliest thing walking. Can't help but be. Ought to be a law: two ugly people doubling up like that to make more ugly. Be better off in the ground. Well, I wouldn't worry none. It be a miracle if it live.

Suspended between the nastiness of life and the meanness of the dead, she couldn't get interested in leaving life or living it.

She was one of the few things abhorrent to him that he could touch and therefore hurt. He poured out on her the sum of all his inarticulate fury and aborted desires. Hating her, he could leave himself intact.

Lay my head on the railroad line, Train come along, pacify my mind.

You accepted like a beast of burden the whip of a stranger's curse and the mindless menace it holds along with the scar it leaves as a definition you spend your life refuting although that hateful word is only a slim line drawn on a shore and quickly dissolved in a seaworld any moment when an equally mindless wave fondles it like the accidental touch of a finger on a clarinet stop that the musician converts into silence in order to let the true note ring out loud.