Quotes from Walter Mosley

I smiled and unraveled a plan that some strategic command at the back of my mind had been hatching while the woman in me made love to Rosetta Jeanette Lawson in the guise of a man.

The law is a flexible thing—on both sides of the line—influenced by circumstance, character, and, of course, wealth or lack of same.

Everybody was screaming for joy. That's what children do - they scream because life is just too much for them but they don't know it yet.

It's like a door open at the side of the house and this cool breeze is blowing in over the back of my neck. The breeze is Death whispering and that door is open for me to go through anytime I want. And I want to go through. I want the confusion to stop--no, not only confusion but pain too.

I always keep thinkin' that maybe I could find a place where you nevah have to get mad, and then I'd be cool. My daddy told me before he died that that place was called Dead .

One thing I had learned in high school was that in sports you always had to move in a direction that your opponent did not expect. From Ping-Pong to prizefighting, the man with the unexpected moves was the player most likely to win.

When I was a kid," I said, "I thought that if I worried about every way I could possibly die, then none of them would happen and I'd live forever.

But I wasn't there to treat the incurable ills of megalomania.

This distinction was very important to him: His mother did love him but not enough to save him.

The first thing a black man and a poor man learns is that trouble is all he's got so that's what he has to work with.

went out of the front door without answering because all I had in my lungs was a scream.

He made me question what was, when for a whole lifetime up till that moment, I accepted the world's excuses.

Sometimes you're hoping that things will be different, that men and women will change over the years and become those good, if hard, folks that the preachers talk about. But it never changes. And if something does get good for a while you could be sure that it will turn sour before you have time to get any real pleasure.

I gave my children the kind of dreams they could live by, but 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.

You know, the undersized genius had said, ain't no way in the world that black folks could'a done enough bad to call all them centuries'a pain down on our heads.

Like most drunks he thought that if he took longer to think he'd come up with the thoughts of a sober man.

It's a continual revelation when you come to understand that the only thing you can expect in return for your own dignity is hatred in the eyes of others. "BLUE

THAT WAS IT. A life worth remembering is hell to live.

Yeah. If you've never been knocked down, then you've never been in a fight.

Being challenged by the law was a rite of passage for any Negro who wanted to better himself or his situation.

Her experience in life was limited and so she fought battles in an imaginary arena

So I got up, went down to the number 1 train, and rode in a car full to brimming over with commuters going from the jobs that they didn't want back to the lives they hadn't bargained for.

Il Diavolo è l'uomo più onesto a camminare su questa Terra, aveva detto Coydog. Ti offre il suo tesoro e ti prende l'anima. Lo chiamano il Principe dei Bugiardi, ma non è diverso da un barista: paghi il tuo bel nichelino e ti bevi il veleno che hai scelto.

Hector's smile was the anticipation of another man's pain. Primo