Quotes from Walter Mosley

I 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.

Letting her go freed me. The dog of my heart didn't want that freedom but my soul, whatever that is, yearned for it. I was that tiny ant, mindlessly repeating the mantra of life

WASTING TIME IS a big problem in the world we live in, that's for sure. But it doesn't mean that we necessarily have to know what the goal is for every step we take. Sometimes we do things that are not directly connected and yet are still significant.

I like dogs. If some evolutionist had told me that men had descended from canines I would have believed her. All the brotherly passion, fang-baring hunt lust, and fear I feel on a daily basis I see in dogs.

There is no true event only a series of occurrences open to interpretation. -Mosley-

He once told me that they'd have to wake him for his execution because "the Mouse ain't gonna miss his rest.

Archibald Lawless, Anarchist at Large," my host said formally. He sat in the swivel chair and leaned back. "What does that mean exactly?" "What do you think it means?" "That you plan to overthrow the government in hopes of causing a perpetual state of chaos throughout the world?" "They aren't much on reality at Xavier or Columbia, are they?

Jackson couldn't fly straight down if you threw him off a cliff.

America was changing at a snail's pace in a high wind, but until that gastropod mollusk reached its destination I had a .45 in my pocket and eyes on all four corners at once.

concatenation

Men and women search for love, find it, and then wake up one morning to the harsh reality that the cap was left off and the precious passion has dried up.

Even as my body rotted and festered under the unblinking eyes of Clark Heinemann, the thoughts I had at death survived. One thousand unpublished stories, 26,473 rejection letters, and all those editorial twits that never gave me a break. The only thing left of me was a raging emotion at every publisher of every insignificant quarterly—but most of all, Clark Heinemann.

A man can live his whole life following the rules set down by happenstance and the cash-coated bait of security-cosseted morality; an entire lifetime and in the end he wouldn't have done one thing to be proud of.

Jesus was doing cartwheels across the lawn in the porch light.

On the other hand, in ancient, and modern, tribal cultures, everything given is already known by everyone you know. Manhood, womanhood, your first trinket, your last rite. Back then, and over there, they expected happiness and therefore achieved that state.

I had forgotten that Death was watching from all sides; that it comes at you from the place you least expect.

dreams are like oceans, Mr. McGill. If they're worth a damn they're bigger than the dreamer, and sometimes, when the one dreaming wants to be as big as what they imagine, the wave pulls'em down.

I liked meeting young black Republicans. It meant that some part of the younger generation was thinking. Who cared if they were wrong?

realized that even though I was a ghost, I was the one being haunted by the animosity I'd worn like a badge through my life. I never made anything of myself, and I held Mira back. I wrote stories that I knew would never be published, and I hated freely. I was my own private hell.

All writing is that structure of revelation. There's something you want to find out. If you know everything up front in the beginning, you really don't need to read further if there's nothing else to find out.

When you deal with a person who's experiencing dementia, you can see where they're struggling with knowledge. You can see what they forget completely, what they forget but they know what they once knew. You can tell how they're trying to remember.

All of the philosophers I studied were white (with a few Eastern exceptions), and, for that matter, they were all male. Africa, the cradle of civilization, seemed to have no footing in the highest form of human thought.

Losing my parents really set me adrift in more ways than one. It's not just losing them. It's losing the possibility of family.

The fear in my heart was like in one of those dreams where you try to run but you can't do it, you can't run because the fear is an anchor in your chest.