Percival Everett Quotes

There is no God, child. There’s religion but there’s no God of theirs. Their religion tells that we will get our reward in the end. However, it apparently doesn’t say anything about their punishment. But when we’re around them, we believe in God. Oh, Lawdy Lawd, we’s be believin’. Religion is just a controlling tool they employ and adhere to when convenient.

Heating and cooling it like that will harden the steel,” Easter said. “Metaphor,” I said. “That’s nearly all we have,” Easter said.

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.

Let’s try some situational translations. Something extreme first. You’re walking down the street and you see that Mrs. Holiday’s kitchen is on fire. She’s standing in her yard, her back to her house, unaware. How do you tell her?”
“Fire, fire,” January said.

“Lawdy, missum! Looky dere.”

“Perfect,” I said. “Why is that correct?” Lizzie raised her hand. “Because we must let the whites be the ones who name the trouble.

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,

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

Perhaps to protect me from the bright light of God. If there was a God, he or she was no good at its job. Apparently there was just too much to do, listening to the prayers of all those who actually mattered, the faithful, the pious, the deluded, the stupid.

Belief has nothing to do with truth.

It’s a bitch, ain’t it? The things we assume.

"What a fuckin' mess. A goddamn clusterfuck".
"Chief, is clusterfuck one word or two?" Jethro asked.
"What?"
"Never mind".
"Get back to the goddamn station".
"Yessir".

Like most people I am smarter than some, dumber than others, skinnier than most, and fatter than a few, but none was ever more confused than I was. I flew with confusion always parallel to me, and a whole internal chase at my rear. The one matter that was not confusing to me, but seemed to escape all the others, was the fact that the only thing that was certain to become obsolete, would necessarily become wearied and worn, was the truth. I knew this in spite of the truth that I had had little truck with the truth in my life. It was not that I considered myself a resident in a den of lies, but rather that my history was shrouded and diced and soaking wet with hysteria and contradiction. Contradictions or no, my trajectory through life, though different from most, was, nonetheless, a trajectory.

I wrote to extend my thought, I wrote to catch up with my own story, wondering all the while if that was even possible.

I chose the word enemy, and still do, as oppressor necessarily supposes a victim.

It would of course be a shame to get too old. There’s no virtue in living too long. Living shouldn’t become a habit.

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.