The Book Of Negroes Quotes
"I seem to have trouble dying. By all rights, I should not have lived this long."
"Careful, I told her, 'I may outlast you!'"
"It's a lot of work, extracting meat from a porcupine, but if they had no other pressing chores, they would do it anyway."
"My hands are the only part of me that still do me proud and that hint at my former beauty."
"What does a person do, when survival is not an issue?"
"Do not trust large bodies of water, and do not cross them."
"I am Aminata Diallo, daughter of Mamadu Diallo and Sira Kulibali, born in the village of Bayo, three moons by foot from the Grain Coast in West Africa."
"I have escaped violent endings even as they have surrounded me."
"Honey, I said, my life is a ghost story."
"I am much happier about the lovely crescent moons sculpted into my cheeks."
"We leave soon," I said, pleased that I could offer him something.
I am referring to your dignity and courage," he says. "We need a human face for our fight, and here you are.
"The abolitionists keep plotting. Already, there are talks of hearings into the slave trade."
"The abolitionists may well call me their equal, but their lips do not yet say my name and their ears do not yet hear my story."
"I have long loved the written word, and come to see in it the power of the sleeping lion."
"The tension makes me tired. I do not care to fight."
"But I have long loved the written word, and come to see in it the power of the sleeping lion."
"I am still upright and I am still walking."
"I cannot speak against the slave trade without condemning slavery."
"Survival has nothing to do with virtue."
"Fomba, in the front, was attached to the back of the cart. The second man, who looked like he wanted to run, was placed behind him."
"WE WALKED ALL DAY. No water. No food. No breaks to pee."
"Moss draped from the trees like loose clothes."
"My voice seemed the only thing that could pull him from that trance."
"Words swim farther than a man can walk."
"The wheels fascinated me, and I tried to imagine my legs were like that, rolling on and on and on in the sun."
"You all done cross one nasty shut-mouth river."
"We will cry out like this always always always just so you don't forget us."
"I would be home. I would be everything for this child until we went home together."
"How could such a tiny child cause such commotion?"
"There are fighting men all around town, drinking and waiting to get out and go home."
"No child would be foolish enough to sleep with a lion."
"If allowed to come, would they endure this hour of purgatory?"
"If God had to be saluted, let it be among the Baptists of Birchtown or Freetown."
"Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves: Britons never never never shall be slaves."
"I would lie as still as I could in the medicine man's bed and wonder what he was singing."
"Let him sing, I thought, because his hands don't touch me when he sings."
"Never never never were the last words I heard."
"I was no longer with the medicine man, no longer a six-foot toss from the coldest grave on earth."
"The water looked dark and menacing enough to kill a person with its chill."
"Negro servants in white breeches and red vests served boiled crabs and roasted peanuts."
"Dominate the centre of the board, at first. Aim your bishops like cannons, and place your knights like spies."
"I knew better than to look into the eyes of my opponent, and slid the gold into my clothing."
"Manna-hata offered a comforting sort of chaos."
"Canvas Town Negroes. A ne'er-do-well lot always willing to relieve you of your goods."
"I took it as a good sign that I was free to write my own name in New York City."
"I am a person, with just as much right to life and liberty as the man who claimed to own me."
"I'm sure a man in your position has many opportunities."
"Crabmeat wants to melt quietly on the tongue."
"The patriots are furious at the British, and are weaning themselves from tea."
"It's war now and we shall have freedom."
"Niggers, nothing. I'm talking about us. Rebels. Patriots."
"The streets were teeming with people who sang and shouted."
"If you flee now, Lindo won't have time to hunt you down."
"I had now written my name on a public document, and I was a person."
"I was shivering, and my clothes were wet and filthy."
"I am a free man, Aminata Diallo. Free tonight, free tomorrow."
"I had imagined, somehow, that my life was unique in its unexpected migrations."
"We may get to the promised land and we may not, but wherever we are, life won't be easy."
"From this," he said, once more pressing his lips to mine.
"He can leave anytime he wishes, but you have to stay to the end. We need you, Meena. That is the deal."
"People showed up in bunches. All together in one family, or having served together as soldiers, cooks or laundresses in the same military regiment, or having run years ago from the same master in Charles Town, Edisto Island or Norfolk."
"Say, you a Negro woman?" "African." "You writing this down?" "That's my job," I said.
"Praise the Lord, girl. Praise the Lord. I always wanted to learn to read. Guess all I can do now is learn to sing."
You're free now, Sarrah, and going to Annapolis Royal." "Don't know where it is, but it sure sound pretty.
A chile is a miracle, 'specially these days," Sarrah said. "Your man with you?" "He is.
"Stick with your mother, little girl," Chekura whispered into my navel.
We are travelling peoples," I said, "all of us.
"Take these," he said, and dismissed me from the room.
Gentlemen, please remove this woman." "I am her husband, and I go with her.
"Travel safe, girl, and watch your eyes."
"I've got to believe in something," I told him.
"Land sakes, good woman, tell me what you've brought into this world."
"I will never indenture you or me to live. I am just getting enough to keep you and me alive these days."
"My children were like phantom limbs, lost but still attached to me, gone but still painful."
"We are travelling peoples, as you say so well, and you are one of the travellest of them all," Daddy Moses said.
"You let them take my daughter, and I need something to eat."
I have barely eaten in days," I said, "and I have friends in Birchtown with nowhere to live.
"She was my last, Jason, and I am saying it because it is true. Don't look for me to keep you alive again when we set foot in Birchtown. Because I am in the mood for dying."
"Criminality, drunkenness, violence, theft, licentiousness, adultery, fornication, bawdiness, dancing and any other displays of uninhibited emotion will be strictly forbidden."
"Why risk losing everything on a dangerous journey to an unknown land?"
"Slavers of many nations still trade in men on the coast of Africa. Some of them do their vile work in Sierra Leone."
"Isn't reading a fabulous escape from the world?"
"I am free and have no debts, but I am waiting for my husband and daughter and could not leave without them."
"You take our provisions and our handouts when it suits you. That doesn't sound like wilting to me—"
"We are the Nova Scotians and we come as equals."
"Thomas Peters, leader of Nova Scotian settlers. Fought for freedom, and is free at last."
"It's not in our interests to starve the very people who have to fetch a profit."
"Some things are better not to think about."
"You have no idea what I have lived through."
"The experience so terrible for you? Here you are, a picture of health."
"This is what I remember about Bance Island."
"Every waking moment is a nightmare for the captives you hold."
"A healthy woman would go for half the price of a man, and a healthy child one quarter."
"I would have been worth about five iron bars, a quarter of a barrel of rum, one or two rifles."
"It's time for me to go home. I don't wish to keep my fiancée waiting any longer."
"We need you, Meena. The abolitionist movement needs you."
"It was men working for slavetraders who killed Thomas Peters."
"I am not long for this world, Meena. I bid you a fine journey home."
"It's so your dignity will remain intact as you journey inland."