Quotes from Paulette Jiles

All he had was the story of his life, which was as good as any other man's, and in the end it is all we have.

What I have heard from the Mandan and Sioux is that the Comanche are perpetually in a state of war with everybody. A Brulé Sioux man, an old man, said they had come from beyond the Rocky Mountains and simply leapt on everybody like tigers.

Maybe we have just one message, and it is delivered to us when we are born and we are never sure what it says; it may have nothing to do with us personally but it must be carried by hand through a life, all the way, and at the end handed over, sealed.

Vesey said there would be the men coming home, towns going up. That's the place for a free nigger, is freighting. That's what the free niggers did in the South, done it for years. White men don't care if you freight or barber. Now I don't want to be a barber. I'd cut somebody's ear off by mistake and they'd lynch me. "Don't make jokes like that," said Britt.

Sometime in the distant past the Indian people had known these immense beasts. Maybe they had hunted them or prayed to them. For the first time he understood that the red men had myths and histories of their own going back to the beginning of human time. That these myths had nothing to do with Europeans. Nothing. Jiles, Paulette. The Color of Lightning: A Novel (p. 127). HarperCollins e-books. Kindle Edition.

Once she had found a box full of e-books and took one of them apart to see if there were some way it had stored books inside it, but there was nothing inside but things called components. A teacher explained that they didn't work anymore because the books that were supposed to appear on them had to be sent from a cloud that no longer existed. It didn't matter. There were so few clouds anyway in the blazing vacant sky.

I wouldn't fool with these people too much," Deaver said. "They are not toys or dolls that one can arrange their thoughts or minds as you wish, simply give them a change of costume. They are grown men and they are lethal." Jiles, Paulette. The Color of Lightning: A Novel (p. 184). HarperCollins e-books. Kindle Edition.

As for protecting this feral child he was all for it in principle but wished he could find somebody else to do it.

However, the general population had not settled the matter of free black people in their minds yet. All was in flux. Flux: a soldering aid that promotes the fusion of two surfaces, an unstable substance that catches fire.

Così la trascinarono di nuovo verso il suo destino. Verso il carro, verso il mondo necessario dell'uomo bianco che sembrava non volerla.

Ed eccolo, ancora a fantasticare come uno sciocco, ancora a leggere le notizie dal mondo nella speranza che servissero a qualcosa di buono, però alla fine era costretto a portare un'arma alla cintura e aveva una bambina da proteggere, e nessuna storia stampata poteva cambiare la situazione.

Britt said, "I closed the deal on Lottie Durgan and we are talking about her grandmother, Elizabeth Fitzgerald. I can get her cheap." "Jesus," said the major. Here was a black man bargaining for the price of a white woman. The world had turned upside down.

She had been laced into a thing that she could only imagine was for magical purposes, meant to confine her heart and her breath in a sort of cage to hold her forever like a shut fist that would never open.

At last she came to the old French houses around St. Louis Cathedral, and sat down on the steps of the cathedral and put herself in the hands of God. Any God, even a Catholic one.

A woodenness came over her. A Kiowa's first and last resort was courage. A Kiowa did not beg or plead or appease. She knew at the bitter end she could starve away the despair, deny any sustenance to surrender. She wiped her face again and climbed up into the wagon. Ausay gya kii, gyao boi tol.

They were all odd, the returned captives. All peculiar with minds oddly formed, never quite one thing or another. As Doris had said back in Spanish Fort, all those captured as children and returned were restless and hungry for some spiritual solace, abandoned by two cultures, dark shooting stars lost in the outer heavens.

Britt stood outside and watched the regimental band straggling back to the barracks with their instruments in hand. Troopers of the new black Ninth Cavalry had been dismissed and were housing their guidons in the long leather cases. They walked back to the stables, leading their horses. All bays. Brown shoe polish had been used on those horses with white blazes or socks and so they all looked alike.

Every normal person used to be able to produce at least some of their own entertainment...But we have changed from a people who could produce their own everyday amusements to consumers; passive consumers.

His future was all there like a three-draw spyglass shut up and compact and he would draw it out cylinder by cylinder. Behind him were the flames of a burning barn in Kentucky and a childhood of bastardy. The worst was knowing all the time he was a good fiddler, even a superb fiddler, but long before this time and surely now many a good man had gone down to ruin or death unrecognized and probably drunk into the bargain.

He wondered what they wanted. Where they were from. There was anarchy in Texas in 1870 and every man did what was right in his own eyes.

How do they survive it? she asked. Her hands were hidden in the red sleeves of the jacket and only her fingertips appeared beyond the cuffs. The doctor said, Good food and rest and maintaining a calm mind. Nervousness draws a person down. It consumes your vital energy.

Maybe life is just carrying news. Surviving to carry the news. Maybe we have just one message, and it is delivered to us when we are born and we are never sure what it says; it may have nothing to do with us personally but it must be carried by hand through life, all the way, and at the end handed over, sealed

THIS IS A PRINTING OFFICE CROSSROADS OF CIVILIZATION Refuge of all the arts against the ravages of time ARMOURY OF FEARLESS TRUTH AGAINST WHISPERING RUMOR INCESSANT TRUMPET OF TRADE From this place words may fly abroad NOT TO PERISH ON WAVES OF SOUND

NOT TO VARY WITH THE WRITER'S HAND BUT FIXED IN TIME HAVING BEEN VERIFIED IN PROOF Friend you stand on sacred ground THIS IS A PRINTING OFFICE