Quotes About Courage

But it's like riding a bike. A hell-bike, made out of hell.

It was not enough to survive, you have to live—

The first time Caesar approached Cora about running north, she said no.

Black people always found a way in the most miserable circumstances. If we didn't, we'd have been exterminated by the white man long ago.

Don't be afraid: you have a best seller on your hands.

Nowdays, Rosie the Rivetere was a former soccer mom who had just opened her own catering business when Last Night came down and her husband and kids were eaten by a parking attendant at the local megamall's discount- appliance emporium.

Before I came back to North Carolina, I'd never seen a mob rip a man limb from limb," Martin said. "See that, you stop saying what folks will do and what they won't." True

Love and that love will be returned, trust in the righteous path and it will lead you to deliverance, fight and things will change.

Maybe everything the slave catcher said was true, Cora thought, every justification, and the sons of Ham were cursed and the slave master performed the Lord's will. And maybe he was just a man talking to an outhouse door, waiting for someone to wipe her ass. — CORA

them from the ruthless mechanism of the world.

His trick: Don't speculate where the slave is headed next. Concentrate instead on the idea that he is running away from

venturing now or after nightfall. Cora thought better

He embraced the runaways with desperate affection. Cora couldn't help but shrink away. Two white men in two days had their hands around her. Was this a condition of her freedom?

the full moon, the white beacon that so often agitated the slave with a mind to run.

Cora didn't know what optimistic meant. She asked the other girls that night if they were familiar with the word. None of them had heard it before. She decided that it meant trying.

Colson Whitehead

Fear drove these people, even more than cotton money.

The world continued to instruct: Do not love for they will disappear, do not trust for you will be betrayed, do not stand up for you will be swatted down. Still he heard those higher imperatives: Love and that

Watch and think and plan. Let the world be a mob—Elwood will walk through it. They might curse and spit and strike him, but he'd make it through to the other side. Bloodied and tired, but he'd make it through.

It was her grandmother talking that Sunday evening when Caesar approached Cora about the underground railroad, and she said no. Three weeks later she said yes. This time it was her mother talking.

The world may be mean, but people don't have to be, not if they refuse. Mabel

Cora thought he had a mean face, like a burl sprouting from a squat, sweaty trunk.

The boy made a fist. He knew what he'd do if the man put his hand on his leg or tried to touch his thing. He'd vowed to sock Freddie Rich in the face many times and then stood paralyzed when the time came, but this day he felt he could actually do it. Drawing strength from the free world.

She was a survivor but the world took her in bites.