Quotes About Defiance

Because each had discovered years before that they were neither white nor male, and that all freedom and triumph was forbidden to them, they had set about creating something else to be.

I welcomed the circling sharks but they avoided me as if knowing I preferred their teeth to the chains around my neck my waist my ankles

You already alone. If you want more alone, I can knock you into the middle of next week, and leave you there.

You have pissed your last in this house . . . and I don't make velvet roses anymore.

You accepted like a beast of burden the whip of a stranger's curse and the mindless menace it holds along with the scar it leaves as a definition you spend your life refuting although that hateful word is only a slim line drawn on a shore and quickly dissolved in a seaworld any moment when an equally mindless wave fondles it like the accidental touch of a finger on a clarinet stop that the musician converts into silence in order to let the true note ring out loud.

Those white things have taken all I had or dreamed," she said, "and broke my heartstrings too. There is no bad luck in the world but whitefolks.

tougher, because she could do and survive things they believed she should neither do nor survive.

And no, they ain't in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again. What you say out of it they will not heed. What you scream from it they do not hear. What you put into it to nourish your body they will snatch away and give you leavins instead. No, they don't love your mouth. You got to love it. This

the lesson she had learned from her sixty years a slave and ten years free: that there was no bad luck in the world but whitepeople. "They don't know when to stop," she said, and returned to her bed, pulled up the quilt and left them to hold that thought forever

Maybe everybody has a renegade tongue yearning to be on its own.

He fought her the way a coward fights a man--with feet, the palms of his hands, and teeth.

You think you so cute!" I swung at her and missed, hitting Pecola in the face. Furious at my clumsiness, I threw my notebook at her, but it caught her in the small of her velvet back, for she had turned and was flying across the street against traffic. Safe on the other side, she screamed at us, "I am cute! And you ugly! Black and ugly black e mos. I am cute!

Because each had discovered years before that they were neither white nor male, and that all freedom and triumph were forbidden to them, they had set about creating something else to be

Either I am to live in this world on my terms or I will die out of it.

Knowing his label provided him with both comfort and courage, he believed that to name an evil was to neutralize if not annihilate it.

Then Prince and his bandmates sing, "Tried to run from my destruction. You know I didn't even care." What a seminal line for gen X. The

If you meet god, tell him to just leave me alone!

Starke, release me or I'll kick you in the balls." And that would hurt, given the current rock-hard state of that area.

go home, riley. rest and recover from your wounds. i'll see you in the morning" quinn said no, you won't ####### see me in the morning. or any other morning. riley" #### off

Even the reeking dark in the lion's cage seemed precious and infinitely preferable to whatever lay beyond. She would go out like the flame of a candle. Where does the candle flame go when the candle is blown out? She laid her painted face against the iron bars and bared her teeth at death.

Life refused to be controlled.

You mentioned that the McGillahees would fight if provoked. I intend to provoke the bloody hell out of you right here and now.

Defy the conventions . . . keep the commandments.

Give rejection the finger, and rejection gives it back.