Wright Thompson Quotes

I understood in that moment why a memorial for Emmett Till in the Delta wasn't just about justice or truth. Memorials in my homeland had always been about forgetting. Nathan Bedford Forrest in Memphis, the Confederate dead on countless Mississippi courthouse lawns. But this memorial would be about remembering.

Sometimes I worry we've already made our decisions and have no hope of undoing them.

Look at this place,” he says. “This big hotel, this town. It’s dust, all dust. Don’t none of it mean nothin’. It’s all only dust.

Close is always the only possible outcome when someone tries to make the present match up with his memory of the past. Home always seems warmer and safer than it really was. That’s where the pain comes from. We long for a fantasy that won’t ever come true and feel surprise at our inability to create it from force of will.

Perhaps it is almost justice, dad, that we should have to go through war every so often to pay for the peace years.

Less than a decade had passed since the murder, but a world had died. All that violence to protect a way of life, and in the end, it just crumbled to dust.

Bourbon became popular again, and then it became expensive and rare, which made it more popular and yet so hard to get that its original purpose as a way to facilitate and lubricate fellowship was being replaced by the hunting for and finding of it.

What is the cost of knowing our past?
And what is the cost of not?

"What is the cost? I won't ever look at the Rebel flag the same again. Although I like "Dixie", especially when it is played slow, if it were never played again, I would be OK with that."

Both loved me unconditionally and showed that love every day, as well as an unshakable belief in me and my dreams, no matter how unlikely they seemed. That's what I wanted to provide, more than anything else: a safe harbor of encouragement.

The attitudes and intentions are why we should bring it up, to interrogate the present to see what of the past remains. Because our present day potential for violence is alive and undiminished.

I ordered us another, and we sat there, me and my father’s older brother and best friend, and we sipped this beautiful, rare, expensive whiskey and we didn’t need to say a thing.

I've written about my father a lot, too, and while I am not ashamed of his flaws, I did think it was my right to focus on the parts that rang most true to me. It was my job as a firstborn son to protect him in death as I had been unable to do in life.

The citizens in New Orleans, generation after generation, have chosen joy in the face of disaster and oppression. Everything unique about the city is a reflection of that.

up, to interrogate the present to see what of the past remains. Because our present day potential for violence is alive and undiminished.