Kindred Quotes
"I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm."
"The police were shadows who appeared intermittently at my bedside to ask me questions I had to struggle to understand."
"I felt as though I could have lifted my other hand and touched him. I felt as though I had another hand."
"It was also the day I met Rufus—the day he called me to him for the first time."
"I stayed on my feet for a moment holding on to a bookcase and wondering what was wrong, then finally, I collapsed to my knees."
"Drowning! I reacted to the child in trouble."
""You killed my baby!" she screamed. "You killed him!""
"He’s alive!" cried the woman. She grabbed him and nearly smothered him."
"I heard a metallic click, and I froze, thinking I was going to be shot for saving the boy’s life."
"I was too far gone into sickness and panic to understand what she said."
"I was back at home—wet and muddy, but intact."
""No." I lowered my head and closed my eyes for a moment. I was shaking with fear."
"I reached up to loosen his grip, but he wouldn’t let go."
"The room seemed to blur and darken around me."
"Then, just before he would have touched me, he vanished."
"Suddenly, I was outdoors kneeling on the ground beneath trees."
"I had seen it done, been told about it, but I had never done it. Now was the time to try."
"Moments later, the boy began breathing on his own—breathing and coughing and choking and throwing up and crying for his mother."
"I heard the woman speak sharply, but I was too far gone into sickness and panic to understand what she said."
"I was kneeling in the living room of my own house again several feet from where I had fallen minutes before."
""Kevin?" He spun around to face me. "What the hell … how did you get over there?" he whispered."
""Take it easy," he said. "Whatever happens, it’s not going to do you any good to panic yourself again."
"Rufus and his parents had still not quite settled back and become the "dream" Kevin wanted them to be."
"I was afraid that the dizziness might come back while I was in the shower, afraid that I would fall and crack my skull against the tile."
""Is it happening again?" "I think so." I sat very still, trying not to fall off my chair."
"I didn’t see you until you got here. But I was so scared … it was kind of like when I was drowning … but not like anything else I can remember."
""I burned the stable once," he said. "I wanted Daddy to give me Nero—a horse I liked. But he sold him to Reverend Wyndham just because Reverend Wyndham offered a lot of money."
""He said I took money from his desk, and I said I didn’t." Rufus shrugged. "He said I was calling him a liar, and he hit me."
""You vanished." He seemed to have to force the words out. "You were here until my hand was just a couple of inches from you. Then, suddenly, you were gone."
""All that couldn’t have happened in just seconds."
"I wondered how Alice’s parents managed, how they survived."
"A pack of half-wild dogs seemed worse. Or perhaps a pack of tame hunting dogs used to tracking runaway slaves."
"I hugged the side of the road, trying to suppress my nervousness and praying to go home."
"Blacks here were assumed to be slaves unless they could prove they were free—unless they had their free papers. Paperless blacks were fair game for any white."
"I was both afraid of them and glad of their human presence. Dangerous as they could be to me, somehow, they did not seem as threatening as the dark shadowy woods with its strange sounds, its unknowns."
"Please, Master, for God's sake, Master, please…"
"She regained consciousness slowly, first moaning, then crying out, 'Alice! Alice!'"
"I had seen people beaten on television and in the movies... But I hadn’t lain nearby and smelled their sweat or heard them pleading and praying, shamed before their families and themselves."
"He would have kicked me, but I rolled aside and jumped to my feet. Terror gave me speed and agility I never knew I had."
"I scrambled away, kicking him, clawing the hands that reached out for me, trying to bite, lunging up toward his eyes. I could do it now. I could do anything."
"I closed my eyes in pain and weariness. It hadn’t just seemed longer to me. I had been gone for hours and I knew it."
"My ancestors survived that era—survived it with fewer advantages than you have. You’re no less than they are."
"A patroller is … was a white man, usually young, often poor, sometimes drunk. He was a member of a group of such men organized to keep the blacks in line."
"To survive, my ancestors had to put up with more than I ever could. Much more."
"Rufus’s fear of death calls me to him, and my own fear of death sends me home."
"You sure do talk funny," said Nigel. "Matter of opinion," I said.
"Good thing he was barefoot," he said. "A shoe would have to be cut off that foot now."
"Niggers can't marry white people!" said Rufus. "Rufe, how'd you like people to call you white trash when they talk to you?"
"Where we come from," I said, "it's vulgar and insulting for whites to call blacks niggers. Also, where we come from, whites and blacks can marry."
"We're from a California that doesn't exist yet, Rufus. California of nineteen seventy-six."
"I mean we come from a different time as well as a different place."
"This is a crazy thing that's happened to us. But I'm telling you the truth."
"I didn't think so. Have you got any money?" "Money? Me? No."
"The country's two hundred years old in nineteen seventy-six," said Kevin.
"Nineteen seventy-six," said the boy slowly. He shook his head and closed his eyes.
"Don't go, Dana." I didn't want to go. I liked the boy.
"Come along and have dinner with us," Weylin told Kevin.
"My name is Dana," I said. "I'm from New York."
"I saw you," said Rufus. "You were fighting with Dana just before you came here."
"People don’t learn everything about the times that came before them," I said. "Why should they?"
"We don’t want to come. We don’t belong here. But when you’re in trouble, somehow you reach me, call me, and I come—although as you can see now, I can’t always help you."
"I want to … I have to make a place for myself here. That means work."
"You’ll get into trouble," he said. "Marse Tom already don’t like you. You talk too educated and you come from a free state."
"But I would help him as best I could. And I would try to keep friendship with him, maybe plant a few ideas in his mind that would help both me and the people who would be his slaves in the years to come."
"I don’t have to hurt you. I can arrange something that will scare you before you have time to think about it. I can handle it."
"The ease. Us, the children … I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery."
"You might be able to go through this whole experience as an observer. I can understand that because most of the time, I’m still an observer. It’s protection."
"You read to my boy. I let you do that. But that’s enough reading for you."
"Didn’t I tell you I didn’t want you reading!"
"I treated you good, and you pay me back by stealing from me! Stealing my books! Reading!"
"Nothing seemed to bother me much. I didn’t love the agency now, but, on the other hand, I didn’t kick the furniture in the morning anymore, either."
"My memory of my aunt and uncle told me that even people who loved me could demand more of me than I could give—and expect their demands to be met simply because I owed them."
"If I lived in your time, I would have married her. Or tried to."
"We should never lie to each other, you and I. It wouldn’t be worthwhile. We both have too much opportunity for retaliation."
"Pain had never been a friend to me before, but now it kept me still. It forced reality on me and kept me sane."
"I wasn’t weak at all. It was only the pain that made me move slowly, carefully, like a woman three times my age."
"The pain was a friend. Pain had never been a friend to me before, but now it kept me still. It forced reality on me and kept me sane."
"I awoke. I was lying flat on my stomach, my face pressed uncomfortably against something cold and hard. My body below the neck rested on something slightly softer."
"I waited inside the house with my denim bag always nearby. The days passed slowly, and sometimes I thought I was waiting for something that just wasn’t going to happen. But I went on waiting."
"Anything tastes that bad must be good for you."
"It was as though I was really talking to Kevin. I began to believe I would see him again."
"Repressive societies always seemed to understand the danger of 'wrong' ideas."
"Don’t you know there’s folks in this house who love to carry tales?"
"It’s like dying, though, and going to heaven. Nobody ever comes back to tell you about it."
"I thought he could have given me a decent estimate if he had wanted to."
"I wondered how she had explained her presence here to herself."
"Marrying a slave is almost as bad as being a slave."
"Sometimes it's better to keep the truth to yourself."
"Better to stay alive, at least while there's a chance to get free."
"What’s the matter with you? Why you let me run you down like that? You done everything you could for me, maybe even saved my life."
"I never even saw that they had been moved. I’ll have to watch you better from now on."
"North. Yes, at least there I could keep the skin on my back."
"Daddy’s the only man I know who cares as much about giving his word to a black as to a white."
"You better do like she says, Get her out of here while you can. No telling what our ‘good masters’ will do if you don’t."
"I already know all I ever want to find out about being a slave, I’d rather be shot than go back in there."
"That’s what I said when you bought it, Nothing but a damned toy."
"But if your eyes and your head and your leg hurt the way mine do, dying might start to look good."
"I’ve worked, worked hard every day I’ve been here until your father beat me so badly I couldn’t work! You people owe me! And you, Goddamnit, owe me more than you could ever pay!"
"He’s as close to being scared of you as he’s ever been of anything," said Nigel. "I think he’d rather try to kill you than admit it though."
"We better get Marse Rufe well then. Sarah has a kind of tea she makes that kind of helps the ague. Maybe it will help whatever Marse Rufe has now."