The Twelfth Card Quotes
"His face wet with sweat and with tears, the man runs for freedom, he runs for his life."
"Amid July air hot and thick as liquid paraffin, the lean man leaps over a pile of horse dung."
"Somebody stop him! Five dollars’ gold if you catch him."
"His heart torn, his thoughts clinging to the image of Violet and their son, Joshua, the former slave continues his desperate run for freedom."
"Halt, halt where you are, Charles Singleton! I am Detective Captain William Simms."
"Charles Singleton, you are under arrest for burglary. You will surrender to us or we will subdue you."
"I have been accused of a crime I did not commit!"
"No, sir, I have one other," Charles shouts. He resumes his flight—toward the dock.
"Once let the black man get upon his person the letters, ‘U.S.,’ an eagle on his buttons, a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pockets, and no one on earth can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship in the United States."
"Hold fast to our farm, keep to our fabrication of being caretakers of the land, not owners, and deflect all offers to sell."
"I lay awake till dawn, thinking how difficult it is to bear this secret within me."
"I so desire to share it with the world, but I know I cannot. I have no doubt the consequences of its revelation would be tragic."
"The earth is God’s great constant—and our farm will ultimately bring to our family respectability in the eyes of those who do not respect us now."
"People have to earn the right to be called ‘sir’."
"Before the Civil War, slaves were counted as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of representation in Congress."
"You got the booty of a ten-year-old and you go round like some blondie from Long Island, thinking you’re better’n everybody."
"I’m not stupid, girl. Just, I don’t need to learn this shit."
"d over dx times x to the nth equals nx to the nth minus one."
"You remember when they busted those seniors who smuggled some guns into the school a few weeks ago?"
"Had to keep my cover so I couldn’t take ’em down myself."
"Geneva Settle’s inflexible goal was to flee Harlem at the very first opportunity."
"The girl might say, 'I be at Sammy’s last night.' But somebody really talking ebonics...would say 'I was at Sammy’s.'"
"A baby wasn’t automatically the end of school and a profession but it often was."
"You’d be a claimer in any gang, Gen, nothing personal."
"He was looking at the receding form of the man she’d seen a minute ago, the one in the green jacket."
"No tests, no school until we catch this guy."
"Geneva, you don’t know what kind of muley I can be."
"His dark eyes, which had seemed so easygoing, were now hard as rocks."
"Lost him," he gasped, catching his breath. "Sorry."
"We aren’t exactly going to be moseyin’ on out of here."
"You’ve worked harder on our exercises than any other patient of mine."
"This kind of war is won with small victories."
"We’ll hope for the best," Rhyme said cheerily.
"We think of extremists being the religious right—mothers who have their children lie down in abortion clinic driveways—or people who bomb federal buildings. But they don’t have a monopoly on killing for their principles."
"This isn’t an investigation. This is the Discovery Channel."
"I call it 'knuckle time,' Amie. Something you’ve got to muscle your way through."
"We know his name, we know what he looks like, we know he’s in town... But we can’t goddamn find him."
"But the question came down to what kind of person she was."
"Naw. Was a bleeder but we got it in time. She’ll be all right."
"Often the most important piece of evidence is the last one you find."
"Any good CS searcher’ll assess the scene and immediately target the fragile items."
"If the scene’s secure, the good stuff ain’t going anywhere."
"You look people in the eye and always be respectful, but never call anyone ‘sir’ or ‘ma’am’ unless they earned it."
"They wanta get rid of it. All them coins be heavy and you can’t buy shit with it."
"It’s only a question of where you put the decimal point."
"We have no claim to the construction, we only want title to the land, and the rents that’ve been paid with respect to it."
"The battles’re the same as they’ve always been. It’s just harder to recognize the enemy."
"Perhaps within our hearts is a single repository for both despair and hope, and filling that space with one drives out all but the most shadowy memory of the other."
"I wish the land to pass intact to our son and his issue; professions and trades ebb and flow, the financial markets are fickle, but the earth is God’s great constant."
"What’s the one thing we’ve forgotten all about in the heat of battle, if we may tread through a minefield of clichés again, Lon?"
"People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get."
"Before and After. There are moments that change you forever."