Quotes from Walter Mosley

Human connection only reminded me of what I could lose.

A big part of my life was spent getting the keys for or driving my car. My constant friend was the radio, and most of my conversations were not face-to-face but side by side in the front seat or through the rearview mirror of some jalopy that I would drive until it gave out and I had to buy a new one. I was like some kind of futuristic hermit crab being carried by my temporary husk from place to place rather than feeling the sun on my head or my feet on the ground.

Life, he said, has little to do with progress. More often than not men make the decisions that lead to their own deaths. They delegate, hate, stay when all the signs say go. Mostly they're unwilling to make a deal. And they're almost all forgotten. No better remembered than a cockroach who succumbs to a poison that you set down under the pantry six months before.

I believe that life itself is some kind of conspiracy. If all matter vibrates ~ then everything is music.

He use' to play till the cock crowed, but that ole cock don't crow nearly so much no mo'.

The sun is out and the game's afoot

The landlord and I have a little dispute going." "What kind of dispute?" "I haven't paid rent in seven years and he thinks that it's about time that I did." "And you don't?" "The only truth in the bible is where it says that stuff about money and evil," he said and then he hurried out.

When a woman forgets that she's supposed to be pretty and on display she looks like that murdered girl did, just somebody who's tired and needs to rest.

You could see New Jersey out of Mardi's window. From the seventy-second floor it looked like a scale model of Purgatory.

Where do you have her?" "You know that private cemetery in Hicksville?" "Yeah." "Show up at the gate after the sun rises and I'll buzz you in.

We must remember that there's more than one story and plot in every novel. There are at least as many stories as there are main characters, and each of these stories has to have multiple plots to keep it going – blood and bone, nerve and tissue, forgotten longing and unknown events.

the hard-eyed receptionist, was white and wrinkled. She wore glasses and had not smiled in years.

Jackson Blue, who had read and retained every important book the central library had to offer, once told me that when a child is orphaned at an early age a large part of his psyche remains fixated there. "It's like the boy just turns into a man instead'a growin' up into one," he said.

Though assailed by hopelessness I was not afraid.

No. What I wonder is why would you care?" "I'm a cop, LT. It's my job to protect the welfare of even garbage like you.

Most Americans wouldn't understand why two well-dressed men would have to explain why they were standing on a public street. But most Americans cannot comprehend the scrutiny that black people have been under since the days we were dragged here in bondage.

Every time he slammed his body against the wire fence the jay started as if he were about to fly off, but he didn't. He just kept staring down into those deadly jaws, mesmerized by the spectacle there.

My experience has been that at its best, news reporting is an approximation of the slant on the truth that reporters, editors, and advertisers want the public to know.

But when you live a life among desperate men and women, any door you open might have Pandora written all over the other side.

You know love is true when it survives the devastation it causes.

In spite of appearances, the majesty of nature is just a fancy blanket draped over the malevolence of the creatures of earth.

I had a girlfriend named Lana who told me she loved me but said that her impression of life was that people should live alone, answerable to no one. This, she said, made love a true choice and not a duty that inevitably transmogrified into spite.

Women didn't necessarily need good men to excite them. What they needed, and most men needed too, was somebody who understood their desires and their fears—not necessarily in that order.

was set against a whole cadre of bad men, and maybe a woman or two. I liked that, because danger forces you to appreciate life; to understand its frailty, transience, and its incalculable value. But beyond drugs and danger, the thrill in my body was a delayed reaction to the separation between me and Bonnie Shay.