Quotes from Walter Mosley

spent together in the same bed and still managing to keep separate and remote.

The fact that we once knew each other in Fifth Ward, Houston, Texas, and that we were both still alive and ambulatory, was a miracle in itself. Where we came from he's dead was as common a phrase as he's sick or he's saved. People died in our world with appalling regularity.

Sure can. But you know a white man got to go through sumpin' 'fore he could call a black man friend. White man got to see the shit an' smell it too before he could really know a black friend." Jean-Paul

It wasn't that I missed my daughter but rather that I felt her absence. It occurred to me this gentle awareness was not as painful as but even deeper than heartache.

Same thing's wrong with all men," the white woman said in a husky voice. "Thinkin' about a woman's butt and then wonderin' why they got shit for brains.

The problem with people like Antoinette, people who have only partly comprehended that race is no longer the primary defining factor of American life, is that they, her and her kind, unknowingly keep watch over the masters' wealth; and that the power of that wealth maintains all the ignorance of centuries of classism, racism, and the hierarchy that ignorance demands.

You're a smart one, eh, Rawlins? Yeah, I said. So smart that I'm here with you worryin' 'bout my liberty, my money, and my life. If was any more smarter I wouldn't even have to breathe.

The word hear will gain a new significance, while write will fall into disuse. And really, what will writing become when no one can read? And what will the future generations think of writing? Like we think of hieroglyphics, no doubt.

A man must support his own weight, no matter how much money or power he has; that is the law of gravity.

These were people who faced their fears and created the world as they moved through it.

Her name was Alana Ash, and she was everything a happily married man could want in a prostitute.

existentialist

I was living out the dream of emancipation—a free man in America, desperate for someone to rein me in.

The most dangerous people in the world were men like Desmond Bell. They became SS officers and postmasters; church deacons and cops. In their minds there was always a marching band playing the tune that they stepped to.

It was a reminder that the most desperate battles are fought in our hearts and souls, and that death is only one final trick of the mind.

I wanted to say to the little white man, "Listen, brother, we're not enemies. I just want to go up in an elevator like anybody else. You don't need to worry about me. It's the men that own this building that are making you poor and uneducated and angry.

Oster blender. I poured that concoction into a griddle of sizzling butter, then sprinkled diced strawberries on the wet side. Three

What if' is fo' chirrens, Easy. You's a man.

Scared is the lamp that lights the way.

Most of human life is defined by waiting

We all owe out something, Easy. When you owe out then you're in debt and when you're in debt then you can't be your own man. That's capitalism.

if I had only picked up a telephone and spoken my heart.

all those days I was walkin' on the streets, I kept thinkin' how special you got to be to get born.

And then there was Marella Herzog, a woman with a dog whistle that could call out the beast in me. I felt that if I could spend a week in her company I might grow back a full head of hair.