Percival Everett Quotes

Was she pretty?” he asked. “I dunno. I reckon. It’s a scary thing for a slave to think such things.” “Why is that?” “Jest the way the world is.” “You think this here river is pretty?” Huck asked. “I reckon I do,” I said. “Then why you cain’t say if my mama was pretty?” “River ain’t a white woman.

them out or comprehending them. It was a completely private affair and completely free and, therefore, completely subversive.

Why are people so fucked up?” I asked
“Maybe you do need college, Poiter,” Everett said. “You want to know why people are so fucked up? Son, that’s about the only question I can answer with even a small measure of authority. It’s because they’re people. People, my friend, are worse than anybody.

At that moment the power of reading made itself clear and real to me. If I could see the words, then no one could control them or what I got from them. They couldn't even know if I was merely seeing them or reading them, sounding them out or comprehending them. It was a completely private affair and completely free, and therefore, completely subversive.

He wondered if a man actively seeking to surrender could be captured.

"Let’s imagine now that it’s a grease fire. She’s left bacon unattended on the stove. Mrs. Holiday is about to throw water on it. What do you say? Rachel?”

"Missums, that water gone make it wurs!”

“Of course, that’s true, but what’s the problem with that?”

Virgil said, “You’re telling her she’s doing the wrong thing.

saw the surface of her, merely the outer shell, and realized that she was mere surface all the way to her core.

She had to know, and I’m certain she did, that even the simple matter of dark skin would be a cause of consternation for her parents. I came to imagine them as Ward and June Cleaver. I recalled my mother happening upon me watching that television show one afternoon. It launched her into such a fit of hysteria that I was afraid she might become pregnant again.
“How dare they put that propaganda on the television?” my mother barked. “But of course that’s what the box is for, isn’t it? Here is my black son sitting here in his black neighborhood watching some bucktoothed little rat and his washed-out, anally stabbed Nazi-Christian parents.”
“There’s a brother, too,” I said, being six or so and not really understanding the tirade.
“Oh, a brother, too. I see him there, an older lily white acorn fallen so close to the tree. Turn that crap off. No, leave it on. Study the problem, Not Sidney. Soak it in.” With that she marched off to make cookies.

Yes, but them people liked it, Jim. Did you see their faces? They had to know them was lies, but they wanted to believe. What do you make of that?” “Folks be funny lak dat. Dey takes the lies dey want and throws away the truths dat scares ’em.

In the year of your lord 1963, August 27, I was in a hotel room with John Lewis and three other members of SNCC and I was livid. I had provided several lines to John’s speech and they were being removed. I remember the lines. The first was, If the dogs of the South continue unchained, then we will bite back, we will move on those tender parts that bleed so readily, that bleed so profusely. Okay, I said, understanding that there was a lot of blood in the statement — rather, threat — and so I added the word nonviolently. This was not satisfactory. The next line was, The Kennedy administration does not even talk a good game, failing to support voters’ rights while paying mere lip service to civil rights, as if there is a difference. We say fuck the administration that still walks hand in hand with Jim Crow. Well, I could see that the word fuck was a bit strong and so I suggested screw and then 45 screw nonviolently. I was never much of a player in the politics of the day after that evening.