Julius Lester

“Just because you're bron to someone, it doesn't mean you belong to them.”

“He took the box but did not avail himself of a tissue. She understood. Sometimes it was comforting to feel the wetness of grief's tears on your face.”

“Dying ain't important. Everyone does that. What's important is how well you do your living.”

“I write because the lives of all of us are stories. If enough of those stories are told, then perhaps we will begin to see that our lives are the same story. The differences are merely in the details.”

“To write and not tell the truth? That would be death for any writer. But more, it would be death to the imagination. And if the imagination dies, what would happen to the souls of children?”

“Just because she's dead it doesn't mean I stopped loving her or that she stopped loving me. It's just her body that left. The love didn't.—Jenna Richards”

“Some wounds go so deep that you don't even feel them until months, maybe years, later.”

“What would they do if I said I hurt so much I feel like I want to die?—Jeremy Richards”

“I'm tired of thinking and I'm really tired of Feeling.—Jenna Richards”

“Perhaps one of the writer's tasks is to weave himself into others' pain.”

“Books, and especially fiction, do not proceed from ideas. They are born from feelings ”

“We remember with our emotions. The things that were important in our emotional life, that's what we remember.”

“But I want you around even when I don't need you. —Jeremy Richards”

“To give good hugs you have to have some soft places. —Jeremy Richards”

“But there are times when a tree can no longer withstand the pain inflicted on it, and the wind will take pity on that tree and topple it over in a mighty storm. All the other trees who witnessed the evil look down upon the fallen tree with envy. They pray for the day when a wind will end their suffering. I pray for the day when God will end mine.”

“If I canot know your name, may I light a lamp so I can see your face?'If you sould ever see my face, you will lose me forever.' Why?' Psyche wanted to know. 'Are you ugly? Are you afraid I won't love you if I see your face?'Perhaps I am afraid that if you see my face, it will be THAT that you will love and not me.' I understand, believe me. I know what that feels like.”

“Goodness was not a trait you acquired; it was a value you practiced when you were on the verge of doing evil.”

“...part of the mind's job was to cast doubt on what the heart knew to be true, and the heart, because it had no words, often lost the argument”

“There was an end to weeping. Mourning, however, ebbed and surged but never ceased flowing.”

“How can I love you if I don't know what hurts you?”

“Silence was not the absence of sound but was itself a sound that could be loud or soft, soothing or disturbing, complex or simple.”

“... the object of learning was not to build a better mousetrap but to ask a better question.”

“Often, the human animal dresses terror in rage, and expresses both in a way unlike either.”

“The young accept the extraordinary as normal because they do not compare their lives with those of others when everyone is like them.”

“....the racial divides in the United States will not be overcome until lynchings of all kinds are as painful to nonblacks as they are to blacks, until each of us become guardians of the sufferings history has bequeathed us.”

“While the subject matter is lynching, on a deeper level, this novel is about identity. Whom and what we identify ourselves with determines our characters, determines who we are, and what we do.”

“Being a failure at living your own life as best as you can is better than being a success living the life somebody else says you should live.”

“Stagolee was, undoubtedly and without question, the baddest nigger that ever lived. Stagolee was so bad that the flies wouldn't even fly around his head in the summertime, and snow wouldn't fall on his house in the winter. He was bad, jim. ”

“It ain't how long you know somebody that means anything. It's what that person mean to you in your heart.”