Quotes about blackness
page 10

“Jacob Bekenstein found… in 1971 that every black hole must have an entropy proportional to the area of its horizon… Stephen Hawking then refined this by showing that the constant of proportionality must be… exactly one quarter. …entropy is supposed to correspond to a measure of information …Loop quantum gravity… [gives] a detailed description of the microscopic structure of a black hole. …a horizon can have, for each quantized unit of area, a finite number of states. Counting them, we get exactly Bekenstein's result…”

Lee Smolin (1955) American cosmologist

"Loop Quantum Gravity," The New Humanists: Science at the Edge (2003)

“The tremendous gulf between the sexes yawned—and an abyss, terrifying and thrilling, sheer and black as the arbour in which they sat; a darkness wide, dangerous, imponderable and littered with the wrecks of broken bridges.”

Mervyn Peake (1911–1968) English writer, artist, poet and illustrator

Source: Gormenghast (1950), Chapter 36 (p. 595)

Sex

“Pretty woman, he thought. Pretty little black-skinned woman. Who wanted to kill for love, die for love. The pride, the conceit of these doormat women amazed him. They were always women who had been spoiled children. Whose whims had been taken seriously by adults and who grew up to be the stingiest, greediest people on earth and out of their stinginess grew their stingy little love that ate everything in sight. They could not believe or accept the fact that they were unloved; they believed that the world itself was off balance when it appeared as though they were not loved. Why did they think they were so lovable? Why did they think their brand of love was better than, or even as good as, anybody else's? But they did. And they loved their love so much they would kill anybody who got in its way.”

Toni Morrison (1931–2019) American writer

Song of Solomon (1977)

Love, Women, Children, People

“Since shotguns are not military weapons, your local sporting goods dealer will have good information about them, as long as you aren't black, Spanish, or a white freak.”

William Powell (author) book The Anarchist Cookbook

Source: The Anarchist Cookbook (1971), Chapter Three: "Natural, Nonlethal, and Lethal Weapons".

Sport

“We are what we were at birth, and each trait has remained
in conformity with earth's and with heaven's logic:
Be the devil's tool, resort to black magic,
None can diverge from the ends which Heaven foreordained.”

Marianne Moore (1887–1972) American poet and writer

"The Mouse Metamorphosed into a Maid"
The Poems of Marianne Moore (2003)

Birth

“Admittedly, people of a theological bent are often chronically incapable of distinguishing what is true from what they'd like to be true. (p. 135 of the Black Swan paperback edition of 2007)”

Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion

The God Delusion (2006)

People

“By the way, Mr. Premier: Have you ever noticed that all four of the greatest poets in the world are Muslim? And yet all the Muslims you meet are illiterate or covered head to toe in black burkas or looking for buildings to blow up? It’s a puzzle, isn’t it? If you ever figure these people out, send me an e-mail.”

Aravind Adiga book The White Tiger

The First Night.
The White Tiger (2008)

People, World, Way

“The Italian Nerd does not exist (Nerd in the style of Gary Numan and Kraftwerk, of The Feelies and Devo). The Italian male does not feel / recognize the relevance of nerddom. This was felt at the Milan airport as a patrician black-clad gentleman moved the croissant into his mouth with gusto. The nerds, or what was left of them, were offered American coffee.”

David Woodard (1964) American writer, conductor and businessman

with Christian Kracht
Five Years (2011)

Feeling, Coffee

“There was never a more loyal woman in the South after we were forced by our political leaders to go to battle to defend our rights in ownership of African slaves, but they called it "States' Rights," and all I owned was invested in slaves and my people were loyal and I stood by them to the end. Like General Lee I could not fight against my kindred in a struggle that meant life or death to them. Nevertheless I am now too near the borderland of eternity to withhold my matured conscientious and honest opinion. If there had been no slaves there would have been no war. To fight for the perpetuation of domestic slavery was a mistake. The time had come in the United States to wipe out this evil. The South had to suffer, and even when our preachers were leading in prayer for victory, during the war, and black-robed mothers and wives were weeping for their dead ones, who perished on the field of battle, I had questions in my own mind as to what would be the end of it.”

Rebecca Latimer Felton (1835–1930) American politician

From Country Life in Georgia in the Days of My Youth Felton, p. 86 http://www.google.com/books?id=gHsLIvQ_BN0C&dq=rebecca+latimer+felton&printsec=frontcover&source=in#PPA86,M1.

Life, Death, War, People

“This is the core of the galaxy," Horseface said. "This is the very center of everything there is. A huge black hole eating up the galaxy. The end of everything.”

Clifford D. Simak Highway of Eternity

Highway of Eternity (1986)

“I think the movement contributed to this nation a sense of universal freedom. Precisely because women saw our movement in the sixties, stimulated them to want their rights. The fact that students saw the movement of the sixties created a student movement in this country. The fact that the people were against the war in Vietnam, saw us go into the street and win, made it possible for them to have the courage to go into the street and win, and the lesson that I would like to see from this is, that we must now find a way to deal with the problem of full employment, and as surely as we were able to bring about the Civil Rights Act, the voter rights act--the Voting Rights Act, I mean the education act, and the housing act, so is it possible for all of us now to combine our forces in a coalition, including Catholic, Protestant, Jew and labor and blacks and Puerto Ricans and Mexican-Americans and all other minorities, to bring about the one thing that will bring peace internally to the United States. And that is that any man who wants a job, or any woman who wants a job, shall not be left unemployed.”

Bayard Rustin (1912–1987) American civil rights activist and gay rights activist

Eyes on the Prize interview http://digital.wustl.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=eop;cc=eop;rgn=main;view=text;idno=rus0015.0145.091, Interview with Bayard Rustin, conducted by Blackside, Inc. in 1979, for Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years (1954-1965). Washington University Libraries, Film and Media Archive, Henry Hampton Collection. (1979)

Women, War, People, Education

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

John Ehrlichman (1925–1999) Lawyer, Watergate co-conspirator, writer

as quoted in "Legalize it all" https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/ Harper's Magazine, April 2016

War, People, Home, Communication

“But no, I just don't think with the scientific evidence now -- I think I read an article yesterday on the death penalty, and 68 percent of the time they make mistakes. And it’s so racist, too. I think more than half the people getting the death penalty are poor blacks. This is the one place, the one remnant of racism in our country is in the court system, enforcing the drug laws and enforcing the death penalty. I don’t even know, but I wonder how many of those, how many have been executed? Over 200, I wonder how many were minorities? You know, if you're rich, you usually don't meet the death penalty.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Interview with the Concord Monitor Editorial Board, (August 18, 2011)
2011

Death, People, Law, Penalty

“The tendency in Africa for nations to become independent and, at the same time, the need to do justice to all, does not only mean being just to the black man of Africa but also being just to the white man of Africa. They are the people, not only in the Union but throughout major portions of Africa, who brought civilisation here, who made possible the present development of black nationalism by bringing the natives education, by showing them the Western way of life, by bringing to Africa industry and development, by inspiring them with the ideals which Western civilisation has developed for itself.”

Hendrik Verwoerd (1901–1966) Prime Minister of South Africa from 1958 until his assassination in 1966

As Prime Minister in Parliament on 3 February 1960, in his impromptu reply to Harold Macmillan’s ‘Wind of Change’ speech, 10 quotes by Hendrik Verwoerd (Politics Web) https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/hendrik-verwoerd-10-quotes-hendrik-verwoerd-politics-web-20-september-2016, sahistory.org.za (20 September 2016)

Life, People, Education, Justice

“Albers [on Black Mountain College ] was a beautiful teacher and an impossible person. He wasn't easy to talk to, and I found his criticism so excruciating and so devastating that I never asked for it. Years later, though, I'm still learning what he taught me, because what he taught me had to do with the entire visual world. He didn't teach you how to 'do art'. The focus was always on your personal sense of looking… I consider Albers the most important teacher I've ever had, and I'm sure that he considers me one of his poorest students.”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

Source: 1960's, The Bride and the Bachelors, (1962), p. 198

World, Beauty, Art, Mountain

“I went up to my room, up the dusty stairs of Bunker Hill, past the soot-covered frame buildings along that dark street, sand and oil and grease choking the futile palm trees standing like dying prisoners, chained to a little plot of ground with black pavement hiding their feet. Dust and old buildings and old people sitting at windows, old people tottering out of doors, old people moving painfully along the dark street. The old folk from Indiana and Iowa and Illinois, from Boston and Kansas City and Des Moines, they sold their homes and their stores, and they came here by train and by automobile to the land of sunshine, to die in the sun, with just enough money to live until the sun killed them, tore themselves out by the roots in their last days, deserted the smug prosperity of Kansas City and Chicago and Peoria to find a place in the sun. And when they got here they found that other and greater thieves had already taken possession, that even the sun belonged to the others; Smith and Jones and Parker, druggist, banker, baker, dust of Chicago and Cincinnati and Cleveland on their shoes, doomed to die in the sun, a few dollars in the bank, enough to subscribe to the Los Angeles Times, enough to keep alive the illusion that this was paradise, that their little papier-mâché homes were castles. The uprooted ones, the empty sad folks, the old and the young folks, the folks from back home. These were my countrymen, these were the new Californians. With their bright polo shirts and sunglasses, they were in paradise, they belonged.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Money, People, Sadness, Angels

“I don't see myself as the Great Black Hope. I'm just a golfer who happens to be black and Asian. It doesn't matter whether they're white, black, brown or green.”

Tiger Woods (1975) American professional golfer

Tiger Woods,ref; St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture by D. Byron Painter http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_g1epc/is_bio/ai_2419201328

Hope

“Herbert Marcuse made a lengthy, impassioned response. What good was the Voting Rights Act accomplishing, he said, since the blacks were pursuing the tawdry values as their white fellow citizens? They were accepting the same capitalist values and aping the life-restricting respectability of the middle class. At a prolonged pause in his reply, just as he was getting his second wind, I rose and asked him a simple question: 'Which do you prefer, a situation in which the blacks had no freedom to vote or one in which they had the freedom to vote but chose wrongly?' Marcuse's response surprised the audience--and subsequently perhaps Marcuse himself: 'Since I have gone so far out on a limb, I may as well go all the way. I would prefer that they did not have the freedom to vote if they are going to make the wrong use of their freedom.”

Sidney Hook (1902–1989) American philosopher

For this and other reasons, I suspect, Marcuse never became the darling of the black American students.
Out of Step (1985)

Life, Way, Question, Freedom

“…you both fail to understand what is happening to you. You cannot see or hear or smell the truth of what you see — and you, looking for destiny! It’s classic! And the boy, this automaton, he was made of the very mud of the region and sees far less than you. Poor stumblers, neither of you can see the other. To you he is a mark on the score-card of your achievement, a thing and not a man; a child, or even less — a black, amorphous thing. And you, for all your power, are not a man to him, but a God, a force…”

Ralph Ellison book Invisible Man

Source: Invisible Man (1952), Chapter 3.

God, Truth, Boy, Understanding

“Death comes black and hard, rushing down on me from the future, with no possible chance of escape.”

David Gerrold book The Man Who Folded Himself

Source: The Man Who Folded Himself (1973), p. 109

Death, Chance, Future

“[The Mexican revolution] was a break with the past to recover the past. We were trying to deny we had an Indian and a black and a Spanish past. The Mexican Revolution accepted all heritages. It allowed Mexico to be mestizo.”

Carlos Fuentes (1928–2012) Mexican writer

Quoted in Anne-Marie O'Connor, "Novelist Carlos Fuentes confronts mortality and his country's future", http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-fuentes-profile-2006,0,4464743.story Los Angeles Times, 26 April 2006

Past

“Define proof. It's accepted that black holes exist, yet no one has ever seen one. We know they exist because of their effect on nearby objects. Do I have the left arm of ET strapped to a table? No. Are there (government) programs that do, and witnesses willing to come forward and testify to this in the right setting? Yes.”

Steven M. Greer (1955) American ufologist

Undated

“He has really started his political activity based on this racist lie that our first black president was not an American citizen. There was absolutely no evidence for it, but he persisted, he persisted year after year, because some of his supporters, people that he was trying to bring into his fold, apparently believed it or wanted to believe it. … The birther lie was a very hurtful one. You know, Barack Obama is a man of great dignity. And I could tell how much it bothered him and annoyed him that this was being touted and used against him.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

People, Lie, Support, Hurt

“When I lifted the first veil and entered the outer court of the Temple of Initiation, I saw in half darkness the figure of a woman sitting on a high throne between two pillars of the temple, one white, and one black. Mystery emanated from her and was about her. Sacred symbols shone on her green dress; on her head was a golden tiara surmounted by a two-horned moon; on her knees she held two crossed keys and an open book. Between the two pillars behind the woman hung another veil all embroidered with green leaves and fruit of pomegranate.
And a voice said:
"To enter the Temple one must lift the second veil and pass between the two pillars. And to pass thus, one must obtain possession of the keys, read the book and understand the symbols. Are you able to do this?"”

P. D. Ouspensky (1878–1947) Russian esotericist

"I would like to be able," I said. Card II : The High Priestess http://www.sacred-texts.com/tarot/sot/sot04.htm The Symbolism of the Tarot (1913)

Books, Understanding, Reading

“To white Americans of the thirties, however, blacks North and South were invisible. Only th radicals made an attempt to break the racial barriers: Socialists, Trotskyists, Communists most of all.”

Howard Zinn book A People's History of the United States

Source: A People's History of the United States (1980), Chapter 15

“Yea! as I loath, I lust; I prostitute myself to thee, perversely prurient - Wilt thou not make this night the nameless nuptial, the Devil thy Lord and mine at Our Black Mass?”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

Source: Magical Record of the Beast 666: The Diaries of Aleister Crowley 1914-1920 (1972), p. 296

Night

“All black fo' fo' do you want foplay?”

Lil Wayne (1982) American rapper, singer, record executive and businessman

Grove Street Party
Official Mix tapes, Sorry 4 the Wait (2011)

“We have to launch a national campaign against homophobia in the black community”

Coretta Scott King (1927–2006) American author, activist, and civil rights leader. Wife of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Reuters (8 June 2001)

Communication

“Therefore the earth is dark to me, the sunlight blackness,
Therefore I go in tears and alone, by night and day;
Therefore I find no love in heaven, no light, no beauty,
A heaven taken by storm, where none are left but the slain!”

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (1840–1922) English poet and writer

The Desolate City, from Collected Poems (1914)

Love, Beauty, Tear, Light

“Sylvester: When was it that you first did a painting with one or two simple lines, horizontal or vertical, across the surface?
Newman: I would say that it began in '46— '47. In those years, whenever I did a painting with one or two elements in it, it did always have a sense of an atmospheric background, I suppose — with the exception of a painting which I called Euclidian Abyss, where the background is black and has some of the white coming through, but there's no true atmosphere.”

Barnett Newman (1905–1970) American artist

Source: 1960 - 1970, Interview with David Sylvester 2. Spring 1965, p. 255

Sense, Painting

“Sex was an infringement, an attack, an invasion; there was no other way he could see it; every act, however magical and intensely enjoyed, and however willingly conducted, seemed to carry a harmonic of rapacity. He took her, and however much she gained in provoked pleasure and in his own increasing love, she was still the one that suffered the act, had it played out upon her and inside her. He was aware of the absurdity of trying too hard to develop the comparison between sex and war; he had been laughed out of several embarrassing situations trying to do so (“Zakalwe,” she would say when he tried to explain some of this, and she would put her cool slim fingers behind his neck and stare out from the rambunctious black tangle of her hair. “You have serious problems.””

Iain Banks Culture series

She would smile), But the feelings, the acts, the structure of the two were to him so close, so self-evidently akin, that such a reaction only forced him deeper into his confusion.
Source: Culture series, Use of Weapons (1990), Chapter IX (pp. 144-145).

Love, War, Pleasure, Smile

“I will defend my title as heavyweight champion of the world against all comers, none barred. By this I mean black, Mexican, Indian or any other nationality without regard to color, size or nativity. I propose to be the champion of the world, not the white or the Canadian or the American or any other limited degree of champion.”

Tommy Burns (boxer)

Statement of (3 February 1906) after his win against Marvin Hart, as quoted in a profile of Jack Johnson, at Unforgivable Blackness at PBS (2005) http://www.pbs.org/unforgivableblackness/sparring/rise.html.

World, Color

“Let Southern oppressors tremble — let their secret abettors tremble — let their Northern apologists tremble — let all the enemies of the persecuted blacks tremble.”

William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879) American journalist

No. 1 (1 January 1831)
The Liberator (1831 - 1866)

Secret

“Ginger: [hauling Clarice up stairs in a wheelchair]: This ivory tower needs some ramps!
Clarice: What are you saying, Ginger?! Build ramps and anyone could get up!! The whole school would be overrun by black commie dykes in wheelchairs! Really, now!”

Alison Bechdel book Dykes to Watch Out For

#31, "Groves of Academe" (1988), collected in New, Improved! DTWOF (1990).
Dykes to Watch Out For

School

“All white men are responsible for white oppression. It is much too easy to say, "Racism is not my fault," or "I am not responsible for the country's inhumanity to the black man. … But insofar as white do-gooders tolerate and sponsor racism in their educational institutions, their political, economic and social structures, their churches, and in every other aspect of American life, they are directly responsible for racism. … Racism is possible because whites are indifferent to suffering and patient with cruelty. Karl Jaspers' description of metaphysical guilt is pertinent here. "There exists among men, because they are men, a solidarity through which each shares responsibility for every injustice and every wrong committed in the world, and especially for crimes that are committed in his presence or of which he cannot be ignorant."”

James H. Cone (1938–2018) American theologian

Source: Black Theology and Black Power (1969), p. 24

Life, Men, World, Education

“It's very therapeutic, what I do. Other people get this anonymity and thrill from being in an Internet chat room, where they can be anybody they want to be. That's the feeling I get, but to an even greater extent. I physically take on these characteristics. Afterwards, I feel I'm a parrot. I need a black bag put over my head until I become myself again.”

Tracey Ullman (1959) English-born actress, comedian, singer, dancer, screenwriter, producer, director, author and businesswoman

On playing multiple characters in her television shows "Ullman, By Hook & By 'Crooks'" http://www.nydailynews.com/ullman-hook-crooks-tracey-tireless-efforts-landed-role-woody-allen-leading-lady-article-1.859726 (NY Daily News, 14 May 2000)

People, Feeling

“Because I've been just drilled by TV hosts over the past week, "How dare you say that, uh, you know, it's not the law of the land?"" Because that's their phrase, "it’s the law of the land". Michael, the Dred Scott decision of 1857 still remains to this day the law of the land which says that black people aren't fully human. Does anybody still follow the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision?”

Mike Huckabee (1955) Arkansas politician

Michael Medved Show, , quoted in

People, Law, Decision, Past

“If I a fancy take
To black and blue,
That fancy doth it beauty make.”

John Suckling (1609–1642) English poet

Of thee (kind boy) I ask no red and white.
Other poems

Beauty

“So why has that officer, like his colleagues, locked up so many young men of color? Why does he have that life-shaping experience? Is it because he is a racist? Why are so many black men in jail? Is it because cops, prosecutors, judges, and juries are racist? Because they are turning a blind eye to white robbers and drug dealers? The answer is a fourth hard truth, I don't think so. If it were so, that would be easier to address. We would just need to change the way we hire, train, and measure law enforcement and that would substantially fix it. We would then go get those white criminals we have been ignoring. But the truth is significantly harder than that.”

James Comey (1960) American lawyer and the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

2010s, Hard Truths: Law Enforcement (2015)

Life, Men, Truth, Law

“Allen: That's quite a lovely Jackson Pollock, isn't it?
Woman: Yes, it is.
Allen: What does it say to you?
Woman: It restates the negativeness of the universe. The hideous lonely emptiness of existence. Nothingness. The predicament of man forced to live in a barren, godless eternity like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with nothing but waste, horror, and degradation, forming a useless, bleak straitjacket in a black, absurd cosmos.
Allen: What are you doing Saturday night?
Woman: Committing suicide.
Allen: What about Friday night?”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Play It Again, Sam (1972).

Love, Suicide, Universe, Night

“I'm probably the only guy in the world that likes to eat black licorice.”

Patrick Stump (1984) American musician

Friends or Enemies.com

World, Guy

“The direction of the world overwhelms me at this time. In the long run, all the continents (yellow, black and brown) will spill over onto Old Europe. They are hundreds and hundreds of millions. They are hungry and they are not afraid to die. We no longer know how to die or how to kill. We could preach, but Europe believes in nothing. So, we must wait for the year 1000 or a miracle. For my part, I find it harder and harder to live before a wall.”

Albert Camus (1913–1960) French author and journalist

Correspondance: 1932-1960, p.220, Gallimard, 1981. Letter to Jean Granier, 1957 https://books.google.com.br/books?id=56VcAAAAMAAJ&q=le+train+du+monde+m%27accable+en+ce+moment.+a+longue+%C3%A9ch%C3%A9ance,+tous+les+continents+(jaune,+noir+et+bistre)&dq=le+train+du+monde+m%27accable+en+ce+moment.+a+longue+%C3%A9ch%C3%A9ance,+tous+les+continents+(jaune,+noir+et+bistre)&hl=pt-BR&sa=X&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAWoVChMIqfiA3aHcyAIVgw6QCh3IngRL

World, Time, Waiting, Parting

“What nationalist educators often fail to recognize is that merely being taught by teachers who are black has not and will not solve the problem if the teachers have been socialized to internalize racist thinking.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Rock My Soul (2003)

Education, Problem, Thinking, Teachers

“I have spoken all over the world and I have great respect for Muslims, I have great respect for the African people, I have respect for the other races. Even back home in Lousiana, I'm called a racist, but I have respect for the Black people of my country and I want them to have their own life, too, and I want them to be able to pursue their own destiny and not be controlled, and not be damaged.”

David Duke (1950) American White nationalist, white supremacist, writer, right-wing politician, and a former Republican Louisiana …

Podcast (25 August 2006)

Life, People, World, Home

“Just as we preach a "black peril" so they will begin to speak of a "white peril" and of the hostility the white men have toward them.”

Jan Smuts (1870–1950) military leader, politician and statesman from South Africa

In June 1947, addressing the head committee of the United Party in Transvaal, cited by Tom MacDonald (1948) in Jan Hofmeyr: Heir to Smuts, p. 219

Men, Hostility

“See, if I come into a black neighborhood and say, "Thanks for watching my show," and give out high fives and all that, I'm not doing no good. I go out and see a kid grabbing his crotch. Ain't nobody telling them that. Where do they get it from? They watch MTV. I say, "If you wash up more often, you won't have to grab your crotch." I'm telling these guys, "Why you gotta grab your crotch?"”

Mr. T (1952) American actor and retired professional wrestler

Then you see Michael Jackson grabbing his crotch 50 times. What's with him?

Guy, Time

“Farrakhan: Is the Federal Reserve owned by the government?
Audience: No.
Farrakhan: Who owns the Federal Reserve?
Audience: Jews.
Farrakhan: The same year they set up the IRS, they set up the FBI. And the same year they set up the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith… It could be a coincidence… [I want] to see black intellectuals free… I want to see them not controlled by members of the Jewish community.”

Louis Farrakhan (1933) leader of the Nation of Islam

Dallas Observer (10 August 2000)
Attributed

Communication

“I started those [the 'Elisabeth Taylor' pictures, Warhol made from a publicity photo of her 1960 film 'BUtterfield 8 a long time ago when she was so sick and everybody said she was going to die [but she recovered]. Now I'm doing them all over, putting bright colors on her lips and eyes. My next series will be pornographic pictures, they will look blank; when you turn on the black lights, then you will see them - big breast and... If a cop came in, then you could just flick out the lights or turn to the regular lights. How could you say that was pornography?... Segal did a sculpture of two people making love, but he cut it all up, I guess because he thought it was too pornographic to be art... The thing I like about it is that it makes you forget about style and that sort of things; style isn't really important.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Source: 1963 - 1967, What Is Pop Art? Interviews with Eight Painters, Part 1 (1963), pp. 116-19

Love, People, Making love, Art

“We're hip to the fact that Superman never saved no black people. You got that?”

Bobby Seale (1936) American activist

Transcript from Seale's conspiracy case as part of the Chicago 8 (October 1968)

People

“The average person, when they see a black man, they would say "Man, he got soul cos' his color." But I disagree with that. I think that God would be a very selfish God if He gave all the soul to one race. He lets his rain fall on the red flowers, the green flowers, the blue flowers; the good, the bad, no races, so He lets His blessings fall on all races. So I think that there are types of souls, like there are different types of cars. But they're all cars. You know, I think that, when a white guy sing[s], if he have soul, that don't mean that he had to copy no negro to get it. I believe if he feels, when one sings from the heart and it reaches another heart, that's soul.”

Little Richard (1932) American pianist, singer and songwriter

Remarks on the question: can a white man sing soul music?. Pop Chronicles: Show 15 - The Soul Reformation I: A symposium on soul http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc19764/m1/, interview recorded 1.2.1968 http://web.archive.org/web/20110615153027/http://www.library.unt.edu/music/special-collections/john-gilliland/o-s.

God, Cars, Color, Guy

“It is perfectly clear that a violent revolution on the part of American blacks would find no sympathy and support from the white population and very little from the majority of Negroes themselves. This is no time for romantic illusions and empty philosophical debates about freedom. This is a time for action. What is needed is a strategy for change, a tactical program that will bring the Negro into the mainstream of American life as quickly as possible. So far, this has only been offered by the nonviolent movement. Without recognizing this we will end up with solutions that don't solve, answers that don't answer and explanations that don't explain.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967)

Life, Support, Freedom, Change

“That evening I met a black witch with a red cat, walking on a headland above the sea.
I had reached the sea unexpectedly, but the sea is unexpected in any event to one who has never known it. You think it land at first, or sky, and penultimately mist. Then you realize a vast azure mass of water lies like a dragon in the sun’s last rays, breathing and shifting on the beaches.”

Tanith Lee book Vazkor, Son of Vazkor

Book Two, Part II “The Wolf Hunt”, Chapter 3 (p. 182)
Vazkor, Son of Vazkor (1978)

Cats, Thinking, Water, Sun

“SPAN ID=Indeed> Indeed, most of the time when we are listening to the noises people make or looking at the black marks on paper that stand for such noises, we are drawing upon the experiences of others in order to make up for what we ourselves have missed. Obviously the more an individual can make use of the nervous systems of others to supplement his own, the easier it is for him to survive. And, of course, the more individuals there are in a group cooperating by making helpful noises at each other, the better it is for all -- within the limits, naturally, of the group's talents for social organization. […] Societies, both animal and human, might almost be regarded as huge cooperative nervous system.

S. I. Hayakawa book Language in Thought and Action

Source: Language in Thought and Action (1949), Cooperation, p. 11

People, Nature, Time, Help

“But we need to stand up for every minority. The Bill of Rights isn't for the prom queen. The Bill of Rights isn't for the high-school quarterback. They're gonna be treated fairly; they always do fine. The Bill of Rights is truly for those who might be unorthodox, who might have an unusual idea, who might not look like everybody else. … I said to him, "You could take an American citizen and send them to Guantanamo Bay with no trial?" and he said, "Yeah, if they're dangerous." So I said, "It begs the question, doesn't it, who gets to decide who's dangerous and who's not?" Anybody remember Richard Jewell, the Olympic bomber—the so-called "Olympic bomber" as it turns out? Everybody thought he was guilty; he was "convicted" on t. v. within hours—but it turned out he wasn't—it wasn't him, he wasn't guilty. But could you imagine if he had been a black man in the South in 1920, what would have happened to him? The Bill of Rights is to protect minorities, whether it's the colour of your skin or the shade of your ideology. We need to be the party that protects the rights of everyone.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

2010s

School, Imagination, Idea, Question

“As the thought comes to me to exorcise and transform this black with a white drawing, it has already become a surface... Now I have lost all fear, and begin to draw on the black surface.”

Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist

Hans Arp's quote on drawing on the black surface; as quoted in Search for the Real, Hans Hofmann, Addison Gallery of modern Art, 1948
1940s

Fear, Drawing

“You know when it comes to racism, people say: " I don't care if they're black, white, purple or green"… Ooh hold on now: Purple or Green? You gotta draw the line somewhere! To hell with purple people!”

Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) American stand-up comedian

Unless they're suffocating - then help'em.
Just For Laughs: On The Edge - 2002

People, Hell, Drawing

“In a previous paper we showed that a static (nonrotating) black hole cannot be endowed with exterior scalar-meson or massive vector-meson fields. Here we show that the same is true for massive spin-2 meson fields. We also extend the above results to the case of a rotating stationary black hole. We conclude from our results that a black hole in its final (static or stationary) state cannot interact with the exterior world via the strong interactions which are mediated by meson fields such as the π (scalar), ρ (vector), and ƒ (spin-2). A direct consequence of this is the impossibility of determining the baryon number of the black hole by means of exterior measurements alone. This results in the transcendence of the law of baryon-number conservation as originally predicted by Wheeler.”

Jacob Bekenstein (1947–2015) Mexican-Israeli physicist

[Nonexistence of baryon number for black holes. II, Physical Review D, 5, 10, 15 May 1972, 2403–2412, 10.1103/PhysRevD.5.2403]

World, Law, Strong

“It thus became vital to the peace of the planters' minds that the frustrations of the "crackers," "sandhillers," or "poor white trash" be diminished or placated at all costs. This involved, first and foremost, keeping the bogeyman of race ever before the nonslaveholders' eyes, for whatever hatreds the poor whites nursed against the planters, they nursed still greater ones against blacks.”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

Source: 2010s, Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction (2012), Chapter One

Peace

“If you’re born poor, you will die on average nine years earlier than others. If you’re black, you’re treated more harshly by the criminal justice system than if you’re white. If you’re a white, working-class boy, you’re less likely than anybody else to go to university. If you’re at a state school, you’re less likely to reach the top professions than if you’re educated privately. If you’re a woman, you still earn less than a man. If you suffer from mental health problems, there’s too often not enough help to hand. If you’re young, you’ll find it harder than ever before to own your own home. These are all burning injustices, and – as I did with the misuse of stop and search and deaths in police custody and modern slavery – I am determined to fight against them.”

Theresa May (1956) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech declaring bid for the Conservative Party leadership http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-mays-tory-leadership-launch-statement-full-text-a7111026.html (30 June 2016)

Death, Health, Education, School

“Given the inefficiencies of what DC laughingly calls the 'criminal justice system,' I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal…[W]e are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, [but] it is hardly irrational. Black men commit murders, rapes, robberies, muggings, and burglaries all out of proportion to their numbers.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

1992, quoted in [1978-1996: Texas Representative Ron Paul’s Newsletters Contain a Host of Bigoted Claims and Observations, History Commons, http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a7896paulnewsletter#a7896paulnewsletter]
Disputed, Newsletters, Ron Paul Political Report

Men, Justice, Thinking, Evil

“Therefore, simply to say that Jesus did not use violence is no evidence relevant to the condition of black people as they decide on what to do about white oppression.”

James H. Cone (1938–2018) American theologian

Source: Black Theology and Black Power (1969), p. 140

People

“To say that Gannet City was busy would be an understatement. New York in the rush-hour would appear immobile in comparison. There were gannets incubating, feeding chicks, flirting, mating, preening and launching themselves into the air in effortless flight on their six-foot wings. With their creamy- white bodies, wing-tips black as jet and their orange-coloured nape and head they were impressive and immensely handsome.”

Gerald Durrell (1925–1995) naturalist, zookeeper, conservationist, author and television presenter

How to Shoot an Amateur Naturalist (1984)

Business, Appearance

“Black Power seeks not understanding but conflict; addresses blacks and not whites; seeks to develop black support, but not white good will.”

James H. Cone (1938–2018) American theologian

Source: Black Theology and Black Power (1969), p. 16

Understanding, Support

“What is the real issue at stake? Why this determination on the part of the South to maintain the color line and to fight back with all her strength against the combined efforts of certain groups in our Nation, white and black, to break down segregation and to destroy Southern ideals and customs? The answer is simple. The South stands for blood, for the preservation of the blood of the white race. To preserve her blood, the white South must absolutely deny social equality to the Negro regardless of what his individual accomplishments might be. This is the premise - openly and frankly stated - upon which Southern policy is based. This position is so thoroughly justified in the minds of white Southerners that it is sometimes difficult for them to comprehend the reasoning of those who seriously dispute it.”

Theodore G. Bilbo (1877–1947) American politician

Source: Take Your Choice, Separation or Mongrelization (1946), Chapter Four: Southern Segregation and the Color Line.

Color, Effort, Fight, Parting

“Death in your eyes, Earthman. Nothing in your mind but murder. Can that brain of yours comprehend nothing but battle? Is there no curiosity there?…Let me look deeper — if there are depths. Your death will be — useful and, in a way, pleasant. Otherwise — well, the black beasts hunger. And flesh must feed them, as a sweeter drink feeds me…”

C. L. Moore (1911–1987) American author

"Black Thirst" (1934); later published in Shambleau, and Others‎ (1953)

Death, Hunger, Way, Drink

“It's always darkest before it's totally black.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

This is a humorous misattribution that US Senator John McCain has sometimes used since at least January 2000, but there is no indication that Mao actually ever made such a comment, which is a joke referencing the common English proverb "It's always darkest before the dawn." It has also been humorously misattributed to Franklin D. Roosevelt. The quote may be derived from the US television show The A-Team, in which it was uttered in a 1983 episode ("The Rabbit Who Ate Las Vegas") by protagonist John "Hannibal" Smith. A similar quotation is attributed to actor Paul Newman in 2003.
Misattributed

“The history of Australia, black or white, is not only the struggle between peoples but the struggle between nature and people. Nature tamed many of the settlers, sometimes defeating them, but people held many victories, sometimes at high cost.”

Geoffrey Blainey (1930) Australian historian

A Shorter History of Australia (1994)

People, History, Nature, Victory

“I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hoürs we have spent
This night!”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

" I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, Not Day http://www.bartleby.com/122/45.html", lines 1-3 Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

Feeling, Night

“[T]hey wanted… another Joe Louis. A white man's black man… Didn't these idiots realize that Cassius Clay was the name of a slave owner? … Had I been black and my name Cassius Clay, I damned well would have changed it!”

Howard Cosell (1918–1995) American sportscaster

Cosell.

Change

“Well, the New York Times editorial board, that reliable abettor of all the liars, haters, and fantasists, aka Democrats, who detest the American South and lust to rewrite America's history into party-serving fiction, has endorsed dumping Andrew Jackson in favor of rewarding a woman with his place on the twenty dollar bill. So fundamentally important to the nation is this switch that the Board’s reputedly adult members have decided that the only group sober and knowledgeable enough to decide how to destroy another piece of American history and further persecute the South is 'the nation's schoolchildren' who should be made to 'nominate and vote on Jackson’s replacement. Why not give them another reason to learn about women who altered history and make some history themselves by changing American currency?' Why of course, what geniuses! And, then, why not let these kids — who cannot figure out that the brim of baseball cap goes in the front — go on to decide other pressing national issues. Maybe they can replace General Washington on the $1 bill with a Muslim woman and thereby end America's war with Islam. As the saying goes, you could not make this stuff up. Now Andrew Jackson was not the most unblemished of men, but he risked his life repeatedly for his country; killed its enemies; expanded U. S. territory in North America; defeated the British at New Orleans; was twice elected president; and faced down and was prepared to hang the South Carolina nullifiers when he believed they were seeking to undermine and break the Union. Jackson is one of those southern fellows, and so he is now a target for banishment from our currency and eventually our history because he did not treat slaves and Indians as if they were his equals and, indeed, inflicted pain on both. But he also was, along with Thomas Jefferson, another insensitive chap toward blacks and Indians, the longtime icon of the Democratic Party and its great self-praising and fund-raising feast, the annual 'Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner', which was, of course, a fervent tribute to those that General Jackson would have hanged without blinking.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

As quoted in Michael Scheuer's Non-Intervention http://non-intervention.com/1689/democrats-scourge-the-south-after-the-battle-flag-it%e2%80%99s-on-to-old-hickory/ (9 July 2015), by M. Scheuer. 2010s

Life, Women, Men, Pain

“About the accident itself I can say very little. Almost nothing. It involved something falling from the sky. Technology. Parts, bits. That's it, really: all I can divulge. Not much, I know.
It's not that I'm being shy. It's just that—well, for one, I don't even remember the event. It's a blank: a white slate, a black hole. I have vague images, half-impressions: of being, or having been—or, more precisely, being about to be—hit; blue light; railings; lights of other colours; being held above some kind of tray or bed. But who's to say my traumatized mind didn't just make them up, or pull them out from somewhere else, some other slot, and stick them there to plug the gap—the crater—that the accident had blown? Minds are versatile and wily things. Real chancers.”

Tom McCarthy (writer) book Déjà vu

Source: Remainder (2005), Ch. 1.

Light, Parting

“As a rule, white abolitionists either defended the industrial capitalists or expressed no conscious class loyalty at all. This unquestioning acceptance of the capitalist economic system was evident in the program of the women’s rights movement as well. If most abolitionists viewed slavery as a nasty blemish which needed to be eliminated, most women’s righters viewed male supremacy in a similar manner—as an immoral flaw in their otherwise acceptable society. The leaders of the women’s rights movement did not suspect that the enslavement of Black people in the South, the economic exploitation of Northern workers and the social oppression of women might be systematically related.”

Angela Davis (1944) American political activist, scholar, and author

Women, Race and Class (1983)

Women, People, Loyalty

“IN THE SUN: Sickle moon still there in daylight. // We long for things as they were. / We want them back, / our blue-black nights, and the stars.”

Mirkka Rekola (1931–2014) Finnish writer

Star, Sun, Night

“As the only black kid in my primary school playground, animals had become my friends. By 15 I was vegan, although I didn't give up honey until 16. For a while my mother thought it was just "a rasta phase". … I can honestly say I've not been tempted to give up veganism in 27 years. I sometimes smell a chip shop and like the smell but then feel guilty because fish might be part of it. But I'll go home and make vegan chips. After all these years, my favourite food is my mother's butter bean stew with whole potatoes, yam and dasheen. I don't think I've ever made a meal for her, to be honest. I think she would consider it a failing of her motherhood and say "Boy, get out the kitchen."”

Benjamin Zephaniah (1958) English poet and author

"Interview: Benjamin Zephaniah" by John Hind, TheGuardian.com (18 July 2010) https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/jul/18/benjamin-zephaniah-life-on-a-plate.

School, Food, Feeling, Home

“I wished to find out whether a similar bright line could be seen in the spectrum of sunlight as in the spectrum of lamplight, and I found, with the telescope, instead of this, an almost countless number of strong and feeble vertical lines which, however, were darker than the other parts of the spectrum, some appearing to be almost perfectly black.”

Joseph von Fraunhofer (1787–1826) German optical physicist

Joseph von Fraunhofer's Gesammelte Schriften (1888) p. 10, as quoted by Florian Cajori, A History of Physics in its Elementary Branches http://books.google.com/books?id=eegKAQAAIAAJ (1917)

Strong, Appearance, Parting

“Do you remember that terrible moment, señors, when the self-righteousness of your youth died? When all the stern warnings of your elders, ignored until the consequences abruptly came crashing down on your head, made you see in a flash that the warnings hadn’t been unfair or mean-spirited or blind, they’d been right? All along your elders had been trying to tell you about the black joke that is life, trying to help you and save you from pain. But you insisted on running straight into the trap, mocking them as you ran, to the agony that was irreversible and permanent, with no one to blame, finally, but yourself.
It’s not good to see yourself in the mirror then.”

Kage Baker book Mendoza in Hollywood

Part 2 “Babylon is Fallen” Chapter 12 (pp. 259-260)
Mendoza in Hollywood (2000)

Life, Pain, Youth, Help

“I suspect that in the beginning Maurice hoped that Rosy would calm down. Yet mere inspection suggested that she would not easily bend. By choice she did not emphasize her feminine qualities. Though her features were strong, she was not unattractive and might have been quite stunning had she taken even a mild interest in clothes. This she did not. There was never lipstick to contrast with her straight black hair, while at the age of thirty-one her dresses showed all the imagination of English blue-stocking adolescents. So it was quite easy to imagine her the product of an unsatisfied mother who unduly stressed the desirability of professional careers that could save bright girls from marriages to dull men. But this was not the case. Her dedicated austere life could not be thus explained — she was the daughter of a solidly comfortable, erudite banking family.
Clearly Rosy had to go or be put in her place. The former was obviously preferable because, given her belligerent moods, it would be very difficult for Maurice to maintain a dominant position that would allow him to think unhindered about DNA. Not that at times he'd didn't see some reason for her complaints — King's had two combination rooms, one for men, the other for women, certainly a thing of the past. But he was not responsible, and it was no pleasure to bear the cross for the added barb that the women's combination room remained dingily pokey whereas money had been spent to make life agreeable for him and his friends when they had their morning coffee.
Unfortunately, Maurice could not see any decent way to give Rosy the boot. To start with, she had been given to think that she had a position for several years. Also there was no denying that she had a good brain. If she could keep her emotions under control, there was a good chance she could really help him. But merely wishing for relations to improve was taking something of a gamble, for Cal Tech's fabulous chemist Linus Pauling was not subject to the confines of British fair play. Sooner or later Linus, who had just turned fifty, was bound to try for the most important of all scientific prizes. There was no doubt he was interested. … The thought could not be avoided that the best home for a feminist was in another person's lab.”

James D. Watson book The Double Helix

Description of Rosalind Franklin, whose data and research were actually key factors in determining the structure of DNA, but who died in 1958 of ovarian cancer, before the importance of her work could be widely recognized and acknowledged. In response to these remarks her mother stated "I would rather she were forgotten than remembered in this way." As quoted in "Rosalind Franklin" at Strange Science : The Rocky Road to Modern Paleontology and Biology by Michon Scott http://www.strangescience.net/rfranklin.htm The Double Helix (1968)

Life, Women, Men, Money

“I well remember, as a young teenager, seeing signs printed in large black letters at the fronts of buses: "White seat from front, colored seat from rear." One day when I was thirteen, my friends and I were riding home from school in a half-empty bus — this was at the time that the civil rights movement was just getting off the ground and some police officers were just looking for a reason to shoot a black person who "got out of line." So, counter to our real feelings, we decided to avoid trouble by moving to the back of the bus when the driver told us to.
By that time, the sit-ins and the Freedom Rides had kind of broken the ice, even though things hadn't fully changed. So we saw it every day on TV and read about it in the news. Dad always said, "Stay out of trouble," and we did.”

Herman Cain (1945) American writer, businessman and activist

p. 25 http://books.google.com/books?id=hdhWF9bVqXwC&pg=PA25 2010s, This is Herman Cain!: My Journey to the White House (2011)

School, Color, Feeling, Home

“As a proud American, a father who lost his own dad in a senseless act of violence, and a black man, I have been deeply troubled by the deaths of African-Americans at the hands of law enforcement and angered by the cowardly and hateful targeting and killing of police officers. I grieve with the families who have lost loved ones, as I know their pain all too well.”

Michael Jordan (1963) American retired professional basketball player and businessman

Love, Death, Pain, Hate

“In fact I am such a nonentity by the standards of our culture that People magazine not only will never feature a piece about me but might also reject my attempts to subscribe to their publication on the grounds that the black-hole gravity of my noncelebrity is powerful enough to suck their entire enterprise into oblivion.”

Dean Koontz Odd Thomas

Source: Odd Thomas (2003), Chapter 1; Odd Thomas's introduction

People

“The woman is perfected
Her dead

Body wears the smile of accomplishment,
The illusion of a Greek necessity

Flows in the scrolls of her toga,
Her bare

Feet seem to be saying:
We have come so far, it is over.

Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,
One at each little

Pitcher of milk, now empty.
She has folded

Them back into her body as petals
Of a rose close when the garden

Stiffens and odors bleed
From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.

The moon has nothing to be sad about,
Staring from her hood of bone.

She is used to this sort of thing.
Her blacks crackle and drag.”

Sylvia Plath Ariel

"Edge" http://www.angelfire.com/tn/plath/edge.html Ariel (1965)

Sadness, Smile, Flowers, Perfection

“I never saw more perfect loveliness.
It ask'd, it had no aid from dress: her robe
Was white, and simply gather'd in such folds
As suit a statue: neck and arms were bare;
The black hair was unbound, and like a veil
Hung even to her feet; she held a lute,
And, as she paced the ancient gallery, waked
A few wild chords, and murmur'd low sweet words,
But scarcely audible, as if she thought
Rather than spoke:—the night, the solitude,
Fill'd the young Pythoness with poetry.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

A History of the Lyre
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

Solitude, Perfection, Night

“We’re the only ethnic group in America that has been dismembered. We didn't migrate here or immigrate here voluntarily. The United States came to us in succeeding waves of invasions. We are a captive people, in a sense, a hostage people. It is our political destiny and our right to self-determination to want to have our homeland [back]. Whether they like it or not is immaterial. If they call us radicals or subversives or separatists, that’s their problem. This is our home, and this is our homeland, and we are entitled to it. We are the host. Everyone else is a guest.
It is not our fault that whites don’t make babies, and blacks are not growing in sufficient numbers, and there’s no other groups with such a goal to put their homeland back together again. We do. Those numbers will make it possible. I believe that in the next few years, we will see an irredentists movement, beyond assimilation, beyond integration, beyond separatism, to putting Mexico back together as one. That's irridentism. One Mexico, one nation.”

José Ángel Gutiérrez (1944) American academic

interview with In Search of Aztlán on August 8, 1999 http://www.insearchofaztlan.com/gutierrez.html

People, Home, Problem, Sense

“Mills: Even the people themselves who were perpetrating that violence, did they think that was wise? Was that a wise reasoned action?
Souljah: Yeah, it was wise. I mean, if black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?… White people, this government and that mayor were well aware of the fact that black people were dying every day in Los Angeles under gang violence. So if you're a gang member and you would normally be killing somebody, why not kill a white person? Do you think that somebody thinks that white people are better, are above and beyond dying, when they would kill their own kind?”

Sister Souljah (1964) American hip hop-generation author, activist, recording artist, and film producer

Regarding black-on-white violence in the Los Angeles riots, quoted in David Mills (16 June 1992) "In Her Own Disputed Words; Transcript of Interview That Spawned Souljah's Story" The Washington Post

People, Angels, Thinking, Personality

“From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.”

Randall Jarrell The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

"The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/707.html, complete poem Little Friend, Little Friend (1945)

Life, Dreams, Sleep

“Looka yonder! Looka yonder! A big black cloud come!”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Song lyrics, The Firstborn Is Dead (1985), Tupelo

“I have to say that I haven't met an aggressive beggar in London. In New York, crossing 58th Street from the Plaza Oyster Bar to the Wyndham Hotel, I came up against a huge black man in a long, dark overcoat who said, in deep and threatening tones, "Give me fifty dollars!" I managed to ask him if he would be content with thirty-five and, rather to my surprise, he said, "All right, give me thirty-five dollars!"”

John Mortimer (1923–2009) English barrister, dramatist, screenwriter and author

And so the deal was done.
Source: Where There's a Will: Thoughts on the Good Life (2003), Ch. 24 : Giving Money to Beggars

“But there are motifs that would need three or four months' work, which could be done, as the vegetation doesn't change here. There are the olive trees and the pines that always keep their leaves. The sun is so fierce that objects seem to be silhouetted, not only in black or white, but in blue, red, brown, violet. I may be wrong, but this seems to be the very opposite of 'modeling'. How happy the gentle landscapists of Auvers would be here, and that [con, or 'bastard'? ] Guillemet.”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Quote from Cezanne's letter to Camille Pissarro, from L'Estaque 2 July 1876, taken from Alex Danchev, The Letters of Paul Cézanne, 2013; as quoted in the 'Daily Beast' online, 13 Oct. 2013 https://www.thedailybeast.com/cezannes-letter-to-pissarro-picture-business-isnt-going-well 'The very opposite of 'modeling' meant roughly that Cézanne and Pissarro in their common painting-years in open air would lay down one plane or patch of color next to another in the painting, without any 'modeling' or shading between them - so that it looked as if each component part of the painting could be picked up from the canvas a little like a 'playing card from the table', as Cezanne explains here. Quotes of Paul Cezanne, 1860s - 1870s

Happiness, Tree, Change, Sun

“Ed Bradley was much honored by his peers, the best honor always to receive, from those who judge harshest and judge best. It is very appropriate that Ed Bradley would be honored here in the halls of the Congress of the United States. Perhaps he was destined to be honored in any case, because he was a pioneer, a first of his kind. We are still in an era when the first blacks are coming forward and we honor them simply for piercing the iron veil of race, but we honor Ed Bradley in this Chamber today as a leader of his profession.”

Ed Bradley (1941–2006) News correspondent

[Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, Congressional Record, http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CREC-2006-12-06/html/CREC-2006-12-06-pt2-PgH8798-3.htm, Honoring the Contributions and Life of Edward R. Bradley, H8798-H8800; Volume 152, Number 133, December 6, 2006, United States House of Representatives , printed by the United States Government Printing Office]
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