Quotes from Walter Mosley

was born to be an investigator. For me it was like putting together a three-dimensional, naturalistic puzzle that in the end would be an exact representation of the real world. From the deep bottom

I'm a twenty-first-century New Yorker and therefore have little time to contemplate race. It's not that racism doesn't exist. Lots of people in New York, and elsewhere, hate because of color and gender, religion and national origin. It's just that I rarely worry about those things because there's a real world underneath all that nonsense; a world that demands my attention almost every moment of every day.

Racism is a luxury in a world where resources are scarce, where economic competition is an armed sport, in a world where even the atmosphere is plotting against you. In an arena like that racism is more a halftime entertainment, a favorite sitcom when the day is done.

It didn't matter that it wouldn't last. Beauty never did.

The house smelled of vitamins.

The roads twist and turn up there like maggots on an overripe peach.

Willa was wearing a blue dress reminding me of the femme fatale of one of my favorite novels.

Hi,' Winifred Minette said to her husband. Socrates imagined all of the sweet knowledge buried in her hello. It made him happy.

Some people born to be fat.

When you get old you begin to understand that no one talks unless someone listens, and no one knows nuthin' 'less somebody else can understand.

language. His idea of an investigation had more to do with conquest than it did with intelligence.

sautéed hot Italian sausage with brown mushrooms, minced garlic, stewed tomatoes, fresh basil leaves, dried oregano, and scallion greens. I added cayenne and red wine at the end and let the sauce simmer down into a gravy while I boiled water and then cooked the vermicelli pasta. I should have used Parmesan but

don't like getting calls from lawyers. Just hearing Lewis's name, I shuddered and shrank. And this is in response to my own attorney

how many teachers since Socrates actually lived what they taught?

He looked like a butler dressed by his four-year-old daughter—a mishmash of good intentions and ill design. And there I was, an unshaven, rumpled page of discarded poetry, extending a hand and smiling, no doubt wolfishly.

I like the rules; following them proves to me that I'm a civilized man.

He might not be a good man but he is a good son.

The question is,' John added, 'if a person inside a culture has no knowledge of his place in the unfolding of that culture, or in the history of any other people, and if no one else among either the oppressors or the oppressed has that knowledge, can that person be said to be alive? Indeed on what plane could he possibly exist except as chattel where he is a slave or not?

Our shadow leaders, like some evil wizards of oz, give out grants and grammy's, oscars and lines of tenure, and magically our revolutionary thinkers become grousing members of the establishment.

That was the hippie age, and truth was in movement and bodies and actions.

You don't have to be smart to be tough-minded. As a matter of fact, the combination of stupidity and silence might be the greatest weapon in the history of our species.

Somewhere along the way I had developed the feeling that I wasn't going to outlive the adventure I was having. There was no way out but to run, and I couldn't run, so I decided to milk all those white people for all the money they'd let go of. Money bought everything. Money paid the rent and fed the kitty. Money was why Coretta was dead and why DeWitt Albright was going to kill me. I got the idea, somehow, that if I got enough money then maybe I could buy my own life back.

The only leaders they should evah have is parents, teachers, and generals during time of war. Other than that we all just people come from our mothers and headed for the grave.

Daddy!" she cried. "Are you okay?" There are ten thousand perfectly good reasons not to have children but hearing the love in Feather's voice trumped every one.