Hello and Welcome. This page is a collection of 19 quotes from James book by Percival Everett that I liked and saved while reading this book. I hope you will like these quotes too.
By the way, I am Deepak Kundu, an avid book reader, quotes collector and blogger.
James Quotes
- Waiting is a big part of a slave’s life, waiting and waiting to wait some more. Waiting for demands. Waiting for food. Waiting for the ends of days. Waiting for the just and deserved Christian reward at the end of it all.
- There was nothing that irritated white men more than a couple of slaves laughing. I suspected they were afraid we were laughing at them or else they simply hated the idea of us having a good time.
- Running was something a slave could never do, unless, of course, he was running.
- It was bad enough being a slave, but being fugitive slaves was worse. Being fugitive slaves hiding out under white people’s noses would be intolerable.
- How strange a world, how strange an existence, that one’s equal must argue for one’s equality, that one’s equal must hold a station that allows airing of that argument, that one cannot make that argument for oneself, that premises of said argument must be vetted by those equals who do not agree.
- The Mississippi is swifter than it looks. It’s scary, for that reason. You can mess around in some branches and backwaters and start to think it’s gentle and then you get out into it and it’s a different story.
- 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, sounding them out or comprehending them. It was a completely private affair and completely free and, therefore, completely subversive.
- It always made life easier when white folks could laugh at a poor slave now and again.
- Way I sees it is dis. If’n ya gots to hab a rule to tells ya wha’s good, if’n ya gots to hab good ‘splained to ya, den ya cain’t be good. If’n ya need sum kinda God to tells ya right from wrong, den you won’t never know.
- French is a very complicated language. Hearing it might cause yer ear a consternation from which you might never recover.
- Folks be funny lak dat. Dey takes the lies dey want and throws away the truths dat scares ’em.
- A distance you know is shorter den one you don’t.
- If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not learning.
- A man who refused to own slaves but was not opposed to others owning slaves was still a slaver, to my thinking.
- We’re slaves. We’re not anywhere. Free person, he can be where he wants to be. The only place we can ever be is in slavery.
- It pained me to think that without a white person with me, without a white-looking face, I could not travel safely through the light of the world, but was relegated to the dense woods. Without someone white to claim me as property, there was no justification for my presence, perhaps for my existence.
- 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.
- Hope? Hope is funny. Hope is not a plan. Actually, it’s just a trick. A ruse.
- I am the angel of death, come to offer sweet justice in the night. I am a sign. I am your future. I am James.