James

“It’s actually a simple question, Hopkins. Which would frighten you more? A slave who is crazy or a slave who is sane and sees you clearly?”

We knew that she, I, all of us, were forever naked in the world.

Hope is funny. Hope is not a plan. Actually, it’s just a trick.

My fearsome reputation had apparently been established.

IF ONE KNOWS hell as home, then is returning to hell a homecoming? Even in hell, were there such a place, one would know where the fires were just a little cooler, where the rocks were just a little less jagged. And so it was in my hell.

White people often spent time admiring their survival of one thing or another. I imagined it was because so often they had no need to survive, but only to live.

Belief has nothing to do with truth. Believe what you like.

“You know, dull tools are much more dangerous than sharp ones.”

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

I had stood and listened to this transaction and never once was I asked for either opinion or desire. I was the horse that I was, just an animal, just property, nothing but a thing, but apparently I was a horse, a thing, that could sing.