Percival Everett Quotes

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,

"I ain't never seen two fellas talk so much and say so little," Huck said.
"You be almos' thinkin' dey be preachers," I said.
"You know what I could go fer, Bilgewater?"
"What's that, Dolphin?"

You should know I consider police shootings to be lynchings

I have no desire to offer a political message in a novel. An artist cannot hide from her or his political beliefs; they will be in the work. But to presume that I am smart enough to preach a position runs counter to my artistic sense.

the fact that I might be wanted for kidnapping and murder and I’m a slave. A slave can’t buy a

It's okay to love something bigger than yourself without fearing it. Anything worth loving is bigger than we are anyway.

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

I had to ask myself and answer honestly, How much do I want to be free? And I couldn’t lose sight of my goal of freeing my family. What would freedom be without them?

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.

I considered the northern white stance against slavery. How much of the desire to end the institution was fueled by a need to quell and subdue white guilt and pain? Was it just too much to watch? Did it offend Christian sensibilities to live in a society that allowed that practice? I knew that whatever the cause of their war, freeing slaves was an incidental premise and would be an incidental result.

And though I missed my lover, I was not sad. I was satisfied. I was different.

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

It’s a horrible world. White people try to tell us that everything will be just fine when we go to heaven. My question is, Will they be there? If so, I might make other arrangements.

dull tools are much more dangerous than sharp ones.

Was it evil to kill evil? The truth was that I didn't care. It was this apathy that left me wondering about myself - not wondering why I didn't feel anything or whether I was incapable of feeling, but wondering what else I was capable of doing. It was not an altogether bad feeling.