Quotes from James Carlos Blake

A man who can laugh at himself is truly blessed, for he will never lack for amusement.

The greatest tragedy that can befall a man is never to know who he really is.

One of the greatest of human follies is that we think we know ourselves so well, that we know how we would act under any conditions, that we would under any circumstance 'do the right thing.' Well, as many have discovered, you don't really know what you'll do in the dark till the lights go out.

I've never been given to casual use of vulgar language--unwarranted profanity implies mental laziness--but there's no other way to say this: a guy tries to fuck me ... well, fuck him.

If a woman has a good ass the rest of her wil be nicely configured too, except for maybe the face. The face is always on its own.

You do not tell people to go fuck themselves and then later when you're in trouble ask them to help you.

Sex and violence ... are the two great engines of the world.

Never did I fight for the poor. I fought against the rich--which of course isn't at all the same thing. In any case, the fighting was the point. You don't fight to become free--to fight is to be free. A man with a gun and the will to use it can't be mastered, he can only be killed.

He was the deadliest man in Texas, on that they all agreed.

If the devil ever raised a garden, the Everglades was it.

The power of men like me does not come solely from our ability to kill--which is no small talent in itself, true, but neither is it as rare as gold. No, the true source of our power is so obvious it sometimes goes unnoticed for what it is: our power comes from other men's lack of courage. There is even less courage in this world than here is talent for killing. Men like me rule because most men are faint of heart in the shadow of death.

in the summer of 1845 Edward Little was sixteen years old and restless in his blood.

But I'll tell you the truth,boys, he said. I'd give it all up in a minute if I could just be your age again. And I mean without a nickel in my pocket. All the money on earth aint worth spit compared to bein young and havin a dream to chase after. It's nice to arrive at it, no denyin that, but the real fun's in the gettin there. The gettin there.

I understood more clearly than ever that the line between a noble revolutionary and a lowdown bandit was the line between war and peace.

Whenever he was unclear about some idea or emotion, uncertain in his perception of someone or vague about a memory, he sat to his journal and wrote as precisely as he could what he thought or felt or remembered, and thereby gave those thoughts and feelings and memories the solidity and authority of words recorded on a page. And by that simple act made of them his abiding truth.

Just because it's a world of thieves out there don't mean there ain't no rules to it.

There's an old saying, Buck said. A hundred things can go wrong in a holdup, and if you can think of fifty of them you're a damn genius.

History is a record of human nature in action.

When you make a deal you stick to it. Rock-hard rule. You don't renege, you don't sell out. You hold up your end and expect the other party to do the same. If the other party doesn't, you're entitled to deal with every man of it as you see fit in order to set things right. No--you're more than entitled. You're obligated. Or the rule would mean nothing.

He finally comprehended that the sole impossibility regarding human sorrow is to arrive at some unsurpassable limit to it.

Some of us are always in the borderlands no matter where we might be on the map.

Like Villa, I believed that even though some men did not deserve to go on living, they still deserved to be remembered at their best.

Without the right to defend yourself--and the right to possesss the means to do it--all other supposed rights are so much hot air.

Just imagine coming from people of two different races that had not a blamed thing in common except a love of blood in every which way. Imagine knowing your white daddy was a robber and killer just crazy with greed who raped your Indian momma who herself believed in cutting out people's hearts to please the gods and eating what was left of the victim.