Percival Everett Quotes

I had never seen a white man filled with such fear. The remarkable truth, however, was that it was not the pistol, but my language, the fact that I didn’t conform to his expectations, that I could read, that had so disturbed and frightened him.

"Should we save them, Jim?"
The boy was so innocent.
"Huck, I reckon if'n we save 'em, dey gonna turn me in. What you think?"
The boy studied on that for a spell. "I reckon you're right. But what will them folks do to them?"
"I don't know, Huck. Maybe dey jest pay a fine. Maybe dey get tarred and feathered. I don't know."
"That seems right awful."
"I s'pose it do. But dey was stealin' from dem folk. Tellin' lies lak dey was. He weren't neber no pirate."
"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."
The river put its full pull on us and we watched the men grow smaller.
"I reckon I do that, too," the boy said.
"What say?"
"I kin see how much you miss yer family and yet I don't think about it. I forget that you feel things jest like I feel. I know you love them."
"Thank you, Huck."

I really loved your mother. I was sad when she didn’t come back, but, like I said, I understood and still think it was for the best. For her at least. It really fucked you up. Not so badly as I might have guessed, though. I mean, you’ve grown up to be successful and well adjusted and, of course, unhappy, the way a man is supposed to feel in this world. Just pulling your leg, son.

It’s almost noon, Trig,” I said. “We’ve nearly run out of morning. A sad thought, morning being my favorite part of the day. My least favorite part of the day is from 2:34 to 4:56 in the afternoon.

Is she dead?” Norman asked. I rolled her onto her stomach to try to force the water out of her. I pushed on her chest and her shirt came up to reveal a hole. “Is that…” Norman stopped. I touched the blackened indentation. “She’s been shot,” I said. “Good Lord,” Norman said. “She’s dead.” “We should have left her where she was,” Norman said. “At least she’d be a live slave. Not just another dead runaway.” I studied the lifeless body on the ground before me. “She was dead when I found her,” I said. “She’s just now died again, but this time she died free.

Of all possible worlds this was the one in which I had landed.

To fight in a war,” he said. “Can you imagine?” “Would that mean facing death every day and doing what other people tell you to do?” I asked. “I reckon.” “Yes, Huck, I can imagine.

I have dark brown skin, curly hair, a broad nose, some of my ancestors were slaves and I have been detained by pasty white policemen in New Hampshire, Arizona and Georgia and so the society in which I live tells me I am black; that is my race.

I did not look away. I wanted to feel the anger. I was befriending my anger, learning not only how to feel it, but perhaps how to use it.

"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.

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,

Just keep living,” I said. “Just remember, once they see you, or see me in you, you’ve been seen. I know you don’t understand. But you will one day.

I read and read, but what I needed was to write. I needed that pencil. I could not keep track of my thoughts. I could not follow my own reasoning after a while. This was perhaps because I couldn't stop reading long enough to make space in my head. I was like a man who had not eaten for a season and had then gorged himself until sick. And my books, once read, were not what I wanted, not what I needed.
(...)
With my pencil, I wrote myself into being. I wrote myself to here.

the Bible itself was the least interesting of all. I could not enter it, did not want to enter it, and then understood that I recognized it as a tool of my enemy.

I'm wanted for being a runaway, kidnapping, theft and murder.'
'Are you guilty?' Holly asked.
'Does it matter?' I asked.