text:
Richard Wright

Richard Nathaniel Wright (4 September 1908 – 28 November 1960) was an American novelist and writer of short stories and non-fiction.

Native Son (1940)

 * Harper & Row publishers

 * The more closely the author thinks of why he wrote, the more he comes to regard his imagination as a kind of self-generating cement which glued his facts together, and his emotions as a kind of dark and obscure designer of those facts.
 * p. vii

 * But the moment he makes the attempt his words falter, for he is confronted and defied by the inexplicable array of his own emotions. Emotions are subjective and he can communicate them only when he clothes them in objective guise; and how can he ever be so arrogant as to know when he is dressing up the right emotion in the right Sunday suit?
 * p. viii

 * But, because the blacks were so close to the very civilization which sought to keep them out, because they could not help but react in some way to its incentives and prizes, and because the very tissue of their consciousness received its tone and timbre from the strivings of that dominant civilization, oppression spawned among them a myriad variety of reactions, reaching from outright blind rebellion to sweet, other-worldly submissiveness.
 * p. xii

 * I sensed, too, that the Southern scheme of oppression was but an appendage of a far vaster and in many respects more ruthless and impersonal commodity-profit machine.
 * p. xv

 * It was this intolerable sense of feeling and understanding so much, and yet living on a plane of social reality where the look of a world which one did not make or own struck one with a blinding objectivity and tangibility, that made me grasp the revolutionary impulse in my life and the lives of those about me and far away.
 * p. xvii

 * But he is product of a dislocated society; he is a dispossessed and disinherited man; he is all of this, and he lives amid the greatest possible plenty on earth and he is looking and feeling for a way out.
 * p. xx

 * And in a boy like Bigger, young, unschooled, whose subjective life was clothed in the tattered rags of American "culture," this primitive fear and ecstasy were naked, exposed, unprotected by religion or a framework of government or a scheme of society whose final faiths would gain his love and trust; unprotected by trade or profession, faith or belief; opened to every trivial blast of daily or hourly circumstance.
 * p. xxv

 * I found that I had written a book which even bankers' daughters could read and weep over and feel good about. I swore to myself that if I every wrote another book, no one would weep over it; that it would be so hard and deep that they would have to face it without the consolation of tears.
 * p. xxvii

 * And then, while writing, a new and thrilling relationship would spring up under the drive emotion, coalescing and telescoping alien facts into a known and felt truth. That was the deep fun of the job; to feel within my body that I was pushing out to new areas of feeling, strange landmarks of emotion, tramping upon foreign soil, compounding new relationships of perceptions, making new and - until that very split second of time! - unheard-of and unfelt effects with words.
 * p. xxx

 * I don't know if Native Son is a good book or a bad book. And I don't know if the book I'm working on now will be a good book or a bad book. And I really don't care. The mere writing of it will be more fun and a deeper satisfaction than any praise or blame from anybody. I feel that I'm lucky to be alive to write novels today, when the whole world is caught in the pangs of war and change.
 * p. xxxiv

 * "And still when the delicate and unconscious machinery of race relations slips, there will be murder again. How can law contradict the lives of millions of people and hope to be administered successfully?"
 * p. 361

 * "Injustice which lasts for three long centuries and which exists among millions of people over thousands of square miles of territory, is injustice no longer; it is an accomplished fact of life. Men adjust themselves to their land; they create their own laws of being; their notions of right and wrong.
 * p. 360

 * These were the rhythms of his life: indifference and violence; periods of abstract brooding and periods of intense desire; moments of silence and moments of anger- like water ebbing and flowing from the tug of a far-away, invisible force.
 * "Fear", p. 31, Harper Row 1966

 * He was sitting in a white home; dim lights burned round him; strange objects challenged him; and he was feeling angry and uncomfortable.
 * "Fear", p. 47, Harper Row 1966

 * There were rare moments when a feeling and longing for solidarity with other black people would take hold of him. He would dream of making a stand against that white force, but that dream would fade when he looked at the other black people near him. Even though black like them, he felt there was too much difference between him and them to allow for a common binding and a common life. Only when threatened with death could that happen; only in fear and shame, with their backs against a wall, could that happen. But never could they sink their differences in hope.
 * "Flight", p. 109, Harper Row 1966

 * He was not satisfied with the way things stood now; he was a man who had come in sight of a goal, then had won it, and in winning it had seen just within his grasp another goal, higher, greater. He had learned to shout and had shouted and no ear had heard him; he had just learned to walk and was walking but could not see the ground beneath his feel; he had long been yearning for weapons to hold in his hands and suddenly found that his hands held weapons that were invisible.
 * "Flight", p.125, Harper Row 1966

 * He felt that he had his destiny in his grasp. He was more alive than he could ever remember having been; his mind and attention were pointed focused toward a goal. For the first time in his life he moved consciously between two sharply defined poles: he was moving away from the threatening penalty of death, from the death-like times that brought him that tightness and hotness in his chest; and he was moving toward that sense of fullness he had so often but inadequately felt in magazines and movies.
 * "Flight", p. 141

 * He looked round the street and saw a sign on a building: THIS PROPERTY IS MANAGED BY THE SOUTH SIDE REAL ESTATE COMPANY. He had heard that Mr. Dalton owned the South Side Real Estate Company, and the South Side Real Estate Company owned the house in which he lived. He paid eight dollars a week for one rat-infested room. He had never seen Mr. Dalton until he had come to work for him; his mother always took the rent to the real estate office. Mr. Dalton was somewhere far away, high up, distant, like a god. He owned property all over the Black Belt, and he owned property where white folks lived, too. But Bigger could not live in a building across the "line." Even though Mr. Dalton gave millions of dollars for Negro education, he would rent houses to Negroes only in this prescribed area, this corner of the city tumbling down from rot. In a sullen way Bigger was conscious of this. Yes; he would send the kidnap note. He would jar them out of their senses.
 * Flight, p. 148

 * Because he could go now, run off if he wanted to and leave it all behind, he felt a certain sense of power, a power born of a latent capacity to live. He was conscious of this quiet, warm, clean rich house, this room with this bed so soft, the wealthy white people moving in luxury to all sides of him, whites living in smugness, a security, a certainty that he had never known. The knowledge that he had killed a white girl they loved and regarded as their symbol of beauty made him feel equal of them, like a man who had been somehow cheated, but had now evened the score.
 * "Flight", p. 155

 * Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread.

 * Violence is a personal necessity for the oppressed ... It is not a strategy consciously devised. It is the deep, instinctive expression of a human being denied individuality.
 * They hate because they fear, and they fear because they feel that the deepest feelings of their lives are being assaulted and outraged. And they do not know why; they are powerless pawns in a blind play of social forces.
 * Pity can purge us of hostility and arouse feelings of identification with the characters, but it can also be a consoling reassurance which leads us to believe that we have understood, and that, in pitying, we have even done something to right a wrong.
 * The white folks like for us to be religious, then they can do what they want to with us.
 * “Goddamnit, look! We live here and they live there. We black and they white. They got things and we ain't. They do things and we can't. It's just like livin' in jail."
 * He had lived and acted on the assumption that he was alone, and now he saw that he had not been. What he had done made others suffer. No matter how much he would long for them to forget him, they would not be able to. His family was a part of him, not only in blood, but in spirit.
 * Every movement of his body is an unconscious protest. Every desire, every dream, no matter how intimate or personal, is a plot or a conspiracy. Every hope is a plan for insurrection. Every glance of the eye is a threat. His very existence is a crime against the state!
 * “But rape was not what one did to women. Rape was what one felt when one's back was against the wall and one had to strike out, whether one wanted to or not, to keep the pack from killing one. He committed rape every time he looked into a white face. He was a long, taut piece of rubber which a thousand white hands had stretched to the snapping point, and when he snapped it was rape. But it was rape when he cried out in hate deep in his heart as he felt the strain of living day by day. That, too, was rape.
 * Rather, I plead with you to see a mode of life in our midst, a mode of life stunted and distorted, but possessing its own laws and claims, an existence of men growing out of the soil prepared by the collective but blind will of a hundred million people. I beg you to recognize human life draped in a form and guise alien to ours, but springing from a soil plowed and sown by our own hands. I ask you to recognize laws and processes flowing from such a condition, understand them, seek to change them. If we do none of these, then we should not pretend horror or surprise when thwarted life expresses itself in fear and hate and crime.
 * Slowly he lifted his hands in the darkness and held them in mid-air, the fingers spread weakly open. If he reached out with his hands, and if his hands were electric wires, and if his heart were a battery giving life and fire to those hands, and if he reached out with his hands and touched other people, reached out through these stone walls and felt other hands connected with other hearts -- if he did that, would there be a reply, a shock?
 * If I should say that he is a victim of injustice, then I would be asking by implication for sympathy; and if one insists upon looking at this boy as a victim of injustice, he will be swamped by a feeling of guilt so strong as to be indistinguishable from hate. Of all things, men do not like to feel that they are guilty of wrong, and if you make them feel guilt, they will try desperately to justify it on any grounds; but, failing that, and seeing no immediate solution that will set things right without too much cost to their lives and property, they will kill that which evoked in them, the condemning sense of guilt. And this is true of all men- whether they be white or black -it is a peculiar and powerful, but common need.
 * If only ten or twenty Negroes had been put into slavery, we would call it injustice, but there were hundreds of thousands of them throughout the country. If this state of affairs had lasted for two or three years, we could say that it was unjust; but it lasted for more than two hundred years. Injustice which lasts for three long centuries and which exists among millions of people over thousands of square miles of territory, is injustice no longer; it is an accomplished fact of life.

Black Boy (1945)

 * ISBN 0060929782
 * Written in 1943

 * 'If laying down my life could stop the suffering in the world I'd do it. But I don't believe anything can stop it,' I told him. He heard me but he did not speak. I wanted to say more to him, but I knew that it would have been useless. Though older than I, he had neither known nor felt anything of life for himself; he had been carefully reared by his mother and father and he had always been told what to feel.

 * All my life I have done nothing but feel and cultivate my feelings; all their lives they had done nothing but strive for petty goals, the trivial material prizes of American life. We shared a common tongue, but my language was a different language from theirs.

 * This business of saving souls had not ethics; every human relationship was shamelessly exploited. In essence, the tribe was asking us whether we shared its feelings; if we refused to join the church, it was equivalent to saying no, to placing ourselves in the position of moral monsters.

 * Watching the white people eat would make my empty stomach churn and I would grow vaguely angry. Why could I not eat when I was hungry? Why did I always have to wait until others were through? I could not understand why some people had enough food and others did not.

 * To beg drinks in the saloon became an obsession. Many evenings my mother would find me wandering in a daze and take me home and beat me; but the next morning, no sooner had she gone to her job than I would run to the saloon and wait for someone to take me in and buy me a drink. My mother protested tearfully to the proprietor of the saloon, who ordered me to keep out of his place. But the men—reluctant to surrender their sport—would buy me drinks anyway, letting me drink out of their flasks on the streets, urging me to repeat obscenities. I was a drunkard in my sixth year, before I had begun school.

 * I soon made myself a nuisance by asking far too many questions of everybody. Every happening in the neighborhood, no matter how trivial, became my business.

 * I sat listening to pupils recite, knowing and understanding what was being said and done, but utterly incapable of opening my mouth when called upon. The students around me seemed so sure of themselves that I despaired of ever being able to conduct myself as they did.

 * I memorized it word for word after having heard it but once. Yet, despite my retentive memory, I found it impossible to recite when I went back into the classroom.

 * A quarter of a century was to elapse between the time when I saw my father sitting with the strange woman and the time when I was to see him again, standing alone upon the red clay of a Mississippi plantation, a sharecropper, clad in ragged overalls, holding a muddy hoe in his gnarled, veined hands—a quarter of a century during which my mind and consciousness had become so greatly and violently altered that when I tried to talk to him I realized that, though ties of blood made us kin, though I could see a shadow of my face in his face, though there was an echo of my voice in his voice, we were forever strangers, speaking a different language, living on vastly distant planes of reality.

 * I was overwhelmed to realize that he could never understand me or the scalding experiences that had swept me beyond his life and into an area of living that he could never know.

 * From far beyond the horizons that bound this bleak plantation there had come to me through my living the knowledge that my father was a black peasant who had gone to the city seeking life, but who had failed in the city; a black peasant whose life had been hopelessly snarled in the city, and who had at last fled the city—that same city which had lifted me in its burning arms and borne me toward alien and undreamed of shores of knowing.

 * (After I had outlived the shocks of childhood, after the habit of reflection had been born in me, I used to mull over the strange absence of real kindness in Negroes, how unstable was our tenderness, how lacking in genuine passion we were, how void of great hope, how timid our joy, how bare our traditions, how hollow our memories, how lacking we were in those intangible sentiments that bind man to man, and how shallow was even our despair. After I had learned other ways of life I used to brood upon the unconscious irony of those who felt that Negroes led so passional an existence! I saw that what had been taken for our emotional strength was our negative confusions, our flights, our fears, our frenzy under pressure

 * Not to know the end of the tale filled me with a sense of emptiness, loss. I hungered for the sharp, frightening, breathtaking, almost painful excitement that the story had given me, and I vowed that as soon as I was old enough I would buy all the novels there were and read them to feed that thirst for violence that was in me, for intrigue, for plotting, for secrecy, for bloody murders.

 * They could not have known that Ella’s whispered story of deception and murder had been the first experience in my life that had elicited from me a total emotional response. No words or punishment could have possibly made me doubt. I had tasted what to me was life, and I would have more of it, somehow, someway.

 * To hold an attitude of antagonism or distrust toward Jews was bred in us from childhood; it was not merely racial prejudice, it was a part of our cultural heritage.

 * I was puzzled. Was there something happening next door to where I lived that I did not know? I thought I had poked my nose into every bit of conceivable business in the neighborhood; if something was being sold next door, then I certainly wanted to know about it.

 * If the stars twinkled more than usual on any given night, it meant that the angels in heaven were happy and were flitting across the doors of heaven; and since stars were merely holes ventilating heaven, the twinkling came from the angels flitting past the holes that admitted air into the holy home of God.

 * Anything seemed possible, likely, feasible, because I wanted everything to be possible…Because I had no power to make things happen outside of me in the objective world, I made things happen within. Because my environment was bare and bleak, I endowed it with unlimited potentialities, redeemed it for the sake of my own hungry and cloudy yearning.

 * But I was still shy and half paralyzed when in the presence of a crowd, and my first day at the new school made me the laughingstock of the classroom. I was sent to the blackboard to write my name and address; I knew my name and address, knew how to write it, knew how to spell it; but standing at the blackboard with the eyes of the many girls and boys looking at my back made me freeze inside and I was unable to write a single letter.

 * I sat and cursed myself. Why did I always appear so dumb when I was called upon to perform something in a crowd? I knew how to write as well as any pupil in the classroom, and no doubt I could read better than any of them, and I could talk fluently and expressively when I was sure of myself. Then why did strange faces make me freeze? I sat with my ears and neck burning, hearing the pupils whisper about me, hating myself, hating them; I sat still as stone and a storm of emotion surged through me

 * Once, in the night, my mother called me to her bed and told me that she could not endure the pain, that she wanted to die. I held her hand and begged her to be quiet. That night I ceased to react to my mother; my feelings were frozen. I merely waited upon her, knowing that she was suffering. She remained abed ten years, gradually growing better, but never completely recovering, relapsing periodically into her paralytic state. The family had stripped itself of money to fight my mother’s illness and there was no more forthcoming. Her illness gradually became an accepted thing in the house, something that could not be stopped or helped. My mother’s suffering grew into a symbol in my mind, gathering to itself all the poverty, the ignorance, the helplessness; the painful, baffling, hunger-ridden days and hours; the restless moving, the futile seeking, the uncertainty, the fear, the dread; the meaningless pain and the endless suffering. Her life set the emotional tone of my life, colored the men and women I was to meet in the future, conditioned my relation to events that had not yet happened, determined my attitude to situations and circumstances I had yet to face. A somberness of spirit that I was never to lose settled over me during the slow years of my mother’s unrelieved suffering, a somberness that was to make me stand apart and look upon excessive joy with suspicion, that was to make me self-conscious, that was to make me keep forever on the move, as though to escape a nameless fate seeking to overtake me. At the age of twelve, before I had had one full year of formal schooling, I had a conception of life that no experience would ever erase, a predilection for what was real that no argument could ever gainsay, a sense of the world that was mine and mine alone, a notion as to what life meant that no education could ever alter, a conviction that the meaning of living came only when one was struggling to wring a meaning out of meaningless suffering.

 * Granny intimated boldly, basing her logic on God’s justice, that one sinful person in a household could bring down the wrath of God upon the entire establishment, damning both the innocent and the guilty, and on more than one occasion she interpreted my mother’s long illness as the result of my faithlessness.

 * Many of the religious symbols appealed to my sensibilities and I responded to the dramatic vision of life held by the church, feeling that to live day by day with death as one’s sole thought was to be so compassionately sensitive toward all life as to view all men as slowly dying, and the trembling sense of fate that welled up, sweet and melancholy, from the hymns blended with the sense of fate that I had already caught from life.

 * But full emotional and intellectual belief never came. Perhaps if I had caught my first sense of life from the church I would have been moved to complete acceptance, but the hymns and sermons of God came into my heart only long after my personality had been shaped and formed by uncharted conditions of life. I felt that I had in me a sense of living as deep as that which the church was trying to give me, and in the end I remained basically unaffected.

 * On our way home she would not utter a single word. I walked anxiously beside her, looking at her tired old white face, the wrinkles that lined her neck, the deep, waiting black eyes, and the frail body, and I knew more than she thought I knew about the meaning of religion, the hunger of the human heart for that which is not and can never be, the thirst of the human spirit to conquer and transcend the implacable limitations of human life.

 * “And at last the darkness of the night descended and softly-kissed the surface of the watery grave and the only sound was the lonely rustle of the ancient trees,” I wrote as I penned the final line. I was excited; I read it over and saw that there was a yawning void in it. There was no plot, no action, nothing save atmosphere and longing and death. But I had never in my life done anything like it; I had made something, no matter how bad it was; and it was mine…Now, to whom could I show it?

 * God only knows what she thought. My environment contained nothing more alien than writing or the desire to express one’s self in writing. But I never forgot the look of astonishment and bewilderment on the young woman’s face when I had finished reading and glanced at her. Her inability to grasp what I had done or was trying to do somehow gratified me. Afterwards whenever I thought of her reaction I smiled happily for some unaccountable reason.

 * There were more violent quarrels in our deeply religious home than in the home of a gangster, a burglar, or a prostitute, a fact which I used to hint gently to Granny and which did my cause no good. Granny bore the standard for God, but she was always fighting. The peace that passes understanding never dwelt with us. I, too, fought; but I fought because I felt I had to keep from being crushed, to fend off continuous attack. But Granny and Aunt Addie quarreled and fought not only with me, but with each other over minor points of religious doctrine, or over some imagined infraction of what they chose to call their moral code.

 * As summer neared, my mother suffered yet another stroke of paralysis and again I had to watch her suffer, listen to her groans, powerless to help. I used to lie awake nights and think back to the early days in Arkansas, tracing my mother’s life, reliving events, wondering why she had apparently been singled out for so much suffering, meaningless suffering, and I would feel more awe than I had ever felt in church. My mind could find no answer and I would feel rebellious against all life. But I never felt humble.

 * How long was this going to last? How long was I going to be beaten for trifles and less than trifles? I was already so conditioned toward my relatives that when I passed them I actually had a nervous tic in my muscles, and now I was going to be beaten by someone who did not like the tone of voice in which I spoke.

 * My schoolmates could not understand why anyone would want to write a story; and, above all, they could not understand why I had called it The Voodoo of Hell’s Half-Acre. The mood out of which a story was written was the most alien thing conceivable to them.

 * In the end I was so angry that I refused to talk about the story. From no quarter, with the exception of the Negro newspaper editor, had there come a single encouraging word. It was rumored that the principal wanted to know why I had used the word “hell.” I felt that I had committed a crime. Had I been conscious of the full extent to which I was pushing against the current of my environment, I would have been frightened altogether out of my attempts at writing.

 * The southern whites would rather have had Negroes who stole, work for them than Negroes who knew, however dimly, the worth of their own humanity. Hence, whites placed a premium upon black deceit; they encouraged irresponsibility; and their rewards were bestowed upon us blacks in the degree that we could make them feel safe and superior.

 * Often, when perplexed, I longed to be like the smiling, lazy, forgetful black boys in the noisy hotel locker rooms, with no torrential conflicts to resolve. Many times I grew weary of the secret burden I carried and longed to cast it down, either in action or in resignation. But I was not made to be a resigned man and I had only a limited choice of actions, and I was afraid of all of them.

 * I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at her in amazement. It was on reputedly disreputable Beale Street in Memphis that I had met the warmest, friendliest person I had ever known, that I discovered that all human beings were not mean and driving, were not bigots like the members of my family.

 * Later I came awake with a sudden start, remembering the fright and tension that had accompanied my foray into crime. Well, all that was gone now. I could start anew. I did not like to feel tension and fear. I wanted something else, to be human, to be caught up in something meaningful.

 * Later, after I had grown to understand the peasant mentality of Bess and her mother, I learned the full degree to which my life at home had cut me off, not only from white people but from Negroes as well. To Bess and her mother, money was important, but they did not strive for it too hard. They had no tensions, unappeasable longings, no desire to do something to redeem themselves. The main value in their lives was simple, clean, good living and when they thought they had found those same qualities in one of their race, they instinctively embraced him, liked him, and asked no questions.

 * “That’s all right,” he said. “But when you’re through reading those books, I want you to tell me what you get out of them.” That night in my rented room, while letting the hot water run over my can of pork and beans in the sink, I opened A Book of Prefaces and began to read. I was jarred and shocked by the style, the clear, clean, sweeping sentences. Why did he write like that? And how did one write like that? I pictured the man as a raging demon, slashing with his pen, consumed with hate, denouncing everything American, extolling everything European or German, laughing at the weaknesses of people, mocking God, authority. What was this?

 * The plots and stories in the novels did not interest me so much as the point of view revealed.

 * Reading was like a drug, a dope. The novels created moods in which I lived for days. But I could not conquer my sense of guilt, my feeling that the white men around me knew that I was changing, that I had begun to regard them differently.

 * It would have been impossible for me to have told anyone what I derived from these novels, for it was nothing less than a sense of life itself. All my life had shaped me for the realism, the naturalism of the modern novel, and I could not read enough of them.

 * In buoying me up, reading also cast me down, made me see what was possible, what I had missed.

 * I had no hope whatever of being a professional man. Not only had I been so conditioned that I did not desire it, but the fulfillment of such an ambition was beyond my capabilities. Well-to-do Negroes lived in a world that was almost as alien to me as the world inhabited by whites.

 * A dim notion of what life meant to a Negro in America was coming to consciousness in me, not in terms of external events, lynchings, Jim Crowism, and the endless brutalities, but in terms of crossed-up feeling, of psyche pain. I sensed that Negro life was a sprawling land of unconscious suffering, and there were but few Negroes who knew the meaning of their lives, who could tell their story.

 * (The essence of the irony of the plight of the Negro in America, to me, is that he is doomed to live in isolation while those who condemn him seek the basest goals of any people on the face of the earth. Perhaps it would be possible for the Negro to become reconciled to his plight if he could be made to believe that his sufferings were for some remote, high, sacrificial end; but sharing the culture that condemns him, and seeing that a lust for trash is what blinds the nation to his claims, is what sets storms to rolling in his soul.)

 * I read Stein’s Three Lives, Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, and Dostoevski’s The Possessed, all of which revealed new realms of feeling. But the most important discoveries came when I veered from fiction proper into the field of psychology and sociology. I ran through volumes that bore upon the causes of my conduct and the conduct of my family. I studied tables of figures relating population density to insanity, relating housing to disease, relating school and recreational opportunities to crime, relating various forms of neurotic behavior to environment, relating racial insecurities to the conflicts between whites and blacks… I still had no friends, casual or intimate, and felt the need for none. I had developed a self-sufficiency that kept me distant from others, emotionally and psychologically.

 * I did not act in this fashion deliberately; I did not prefer this kind of relationship with people. I wanted a life in which there was a constant oneness of feeling with others, in which the basic emotions of life were shared, in which common memory formed a common past, in which collective hope reflected a national future.

 * The most valued pleasure of the people I knew was a car, the most cherished experience a bottle of whisky, the most sought-after prize somebody else’s wife. I had no sense of being inferior or superior to the people about me; I merely felt that they had had no chance to learn to live differently. I never criticized them or praised them, yet they felt in my neutrality a deeper rejection of them than if I had cursed them.

 * Repeatedly I took stabs at writing, but the results were so poor that I would tear up the sheets. I was striving for a level of expression that matched those of the novels I read. But I always somehow failed to get onto the page what I thought and felt. Failing at sustained narrative, I compromised by playing with single sentences and phrases. Under the influence of Stein’s Three Lives, I spent hours and days pounding out disconnected sentences for the sheer love of words. I would write: “The soft melting hunk of butter trickled in gold down the stringy grooves of the split yam.” Or: “The child’s clumsy fingers fumbled in sleep, feeling vainly for the wish of its dream.” “The old man huddled in the dark doorway, his bony face lit by the burning yellow in the windows of distant skyscrapers.” My purpose was to capture a physical state or movement that carried a strong subjective impression, an accomplishment which seemed supremely worth struggling for. If I could fasten the mind of the reader upon words so firmly that he would forget words and be conscious only of his response, I felt that I would be in sight of knowing how to write narrative. I strove to master words, to make them disappear, to make them important by making them new, to make them melt into a rising spiral of emotional stimuli, each greater than the other, each feeding and reinforcing the other, and all ending in an emotional climax that would drench the reader with a sense of a new world. That was the single aim of my living.

 * I spent my nights reading Proust’s A Remembrance of Things Past, admiring the lucid, subtle but strong prose, stupefied by its dazzling magic, awed by the vast, delicate, intricate, and psychological structure of the Frenchman’s epic of death and decadence. But it crushed me with hopelessness, for I wanted to write of the people in my environment with an equal thoroughness, and the burning example before my eyes made me feel that I never could.

 * Though I had never had any assignments from a college professor, I had made much harder and more prolonged attempts at self-expression than any of them. Swearing love for art, they hovered on the edge of Bohemian life. Always friendly, they could never be anybody’s friend; always reading, they could really never learn; always boasting of their passions, they could never really feel and were afraid to live.

 * Communism, instead of making them leap forward with fire in their hearts to become masters of ideas and life, had frozen them at an even lower level of ignorance than had been theirs before they met Communism.

 * They had rejected the state of things as they were, and that seemed to me to be the first step toward embracing a creative attitude toward life. I felt that it was not until one wanted the world to be different that one could look at the world with will and emotion. But these men had rejected what was before their eyes without quite knowing what they had rejected and why.

 * (If I were a member of the class that rules, I would post men in all the neighborhoods of the nation, not to spy upon or club rebellious workers, not to break strikes or disrupt unions; but to ferret out those who no longer respond to the system in which they live. I would make it known that the real danger does not stem from those who seek to grab their share of wealth through force, or from those who try to defend their property through violence, for both of these groups, by their affirmative acts, support the values of the system in which they live. The millions that I would fear are those who do not dream of the prizes that the nation holds forth, for it is in them, though they may not know it, that a revolution has taken place and is biding its time to translate itself into a new and strange way of life.)

 * He took me to an office and introduced me to a Jewish boy who was to become one of the nation’s leading painters, to a chap who was to become one of the eminent composers of his day, to a writer who was to create some of the best novels of his generation, to a young Jewish boy who was destined to film the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia. I was meeting men and women whom I would know for decades to come, who were to form the first sustained relationships in my life.

 * During the following days I learned through discreet questioning that I had seemed a fantastic element to the black Communists. I was shocked to hear that I, who had been only to grammar school, had been classified as an intellectual. What was an intellectual? I had never heard the word used in the sense in which it was applied to me.

 * I found that when I talked to them in abstract terms, my ideas were not understood. The irony of it was that I, who had all but to steal books to read, had been branded as an intellectual by the one group that claimed it was dedicated to educating the oppressed and informing them with a vision of life.

 * What a weird experience I had had! At no time had I felt at home in the Communist party. I had always felt that the possibility was there, but always I was not quite sure of the motives of the people with whom I worked and they never seemed quite sure of mine. My comrades had known me, my family, my friends; they, God knows, had known my aching poverty. But they had never been able to conquer their fear of the individual way in which I acted and lived, an individuality which life had seared into my blood and bones.

 * This presentation had lasted for more than three hours, but it had enthroned a new sense of reality in the hearts of those present, a sense of man on earth. With the exception of the church and its myths and legends, there was no agency in the world so capable of making men feel the earth and the people upon it as the Communist party.

 * I headed toward home alone, really alone now, telling myself that in all the sprawling immensity of our mighty continent the least-known factor of living was the human heart, the least-sought goal of being was a way to live a human life. Perhaps, I thought, out of my tortured feelings I could fling a spark into this darkness. I would try, not because I wanted to but because I felt that I had to if I were to live at all.

 * I paced the floor, knowing that all I possessed were words and dim knowledge that my country had shown me no examples of how to live a human life.

'''I picked up a pencil and held it over a sheet of white paper, but my feelings stood in the way of my words. Well, I would wait, day and night, until I knew what to say.''' Humbly now, with no vaulting dream of achieving a vast unity, I wanted to try to build a bridge of words between me and that world outside, that world which was so distant and elusive that it seemed unreal. I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of the hunger for life that gnaws in us all, to keep alive in our hearts a sense of the inexpressibly human.
 * Yes, the whites were as miserable as their black victims, I thought. If this country can’t find its way to a human path, if it can’t inform conduct with a deep sense of life, then all of us, black as well as white, are going down the same drain…

White Man, Listen! (1957)

 * I'm a rootless man, but I'm neither psychologically distraught nor in any wise particularly perturbed because of it. Personally, I do not hanker after, and seem not to need, as many emotional attachments, sustaining roots, or idealistic allegiances as most people. I declare unabashedly that I like and even cherish the state of abandonment, of aloneness; it does not bother me; indeed, to me it seems the natural, inevitable condition of man, and I welcome it. I can make myself at home almost anywhere on this earth and can, if I've a mind to and when I'm attracted to a landscape or a mood of life, easily sink myself into the most alien and widely differing environments.

 * I declare unabashedly that I like and even cherish the state of abandonment, of aloneness; ... it seems the natural, inevitable condition of man, and I welcome it ... I've been shaped to this mental stance by the kind of experience I have fallen heir to.

 * How can the spirit of the Enlightenment and the Reformation be extended now to all men?

 * [As] the tide of white domination of the land mass of Asia and Africa recedes, there lies exposed to view a procession of shattered cultures, disintegrated societies, and a writhing sweep of more aggressive, irrational religion than the world has known for centuries.

 * What vision must Negro writers have before their eyes in order to feel the impelling necessity for an about face? What angle of vision can show them all the forces of modern society in process, all the lines of economic development converging toward a distant point of hope? Must they believe in some `ism'? ("Blueprint" 45)

 * Perspective is that part of a poem, novel, or play which a writer never puts directly upon paper. It is that fixed point in intellectual space where a writer stands to view the struggles, hopes, and sufferings of his people. There are times when he may stand too close and the result is a blurred vision. Or he may stand too far away and the result is a neglect of important things.

 * I must confess that this is no personal achievement of mine; this attitude was never striven for. . . . [ellipsis is in original, unabridged text] I've been shaped to this mental stance by the kind of experiences that I have fallen heir to. I say this neither in a tone of apology nor to persuade the reader in my ideological direction, but to give him a hinting clue as to why certain ideas and values appeal to me more than others, and why certain perspectives are stressed in these speeches.

American Hunger (1977)

 * Originally written in 1943

 * I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.
 * p. 77

Black Boy (American Hunger) (1991)

 * A republication of both Black Boy (1945) and American Hunger (1977) by Perennial Classics

 * As a protective mechanism, I developed a terse, cynical mode of speech that rebuffed those who sought to get too close to me. Conversation was my way of avoiding expression; my words were reserved for those times when I sat down alone to write. My face was always a deadpan or a mask of general friendliness; no word or event could jar me into a gesture of enthusiasm or despair.
 * p. 278

 * My ability to endure tension had now grown amazingly. From the accidental pain of southern years, from anxiety that I had sought to avoid, from fear that had been too painful to bear, I had learned to like my unintermittent burden of feeling, had become habituated to acting with all of my being, had learned to seek those areas of life, those situations, where I knew that events would complement my own inner mood. I was conscious of what was happening to me; I knew that my attitude of watchful wonder had usurped all other feelings, had become the meaning of my life, an integral part of my personality; that I was striving to live and measure all things by it. Having no claims upon others, I bent the way the wind blew, rendering unto my environment that which was my environment's, and rendering unto myself that which I felt was mine. It was a dangerous way to live, far more dangerous than violating laws or ethical codes of conduct; but the danger was for me and me alone.
 * p. 282

The Long Dream (1958)

 * "And, curiously, he felt that he was something, somebody, precisely and simply because of that cold threat of death. The terror of the white world had left no doubt in him about his worth; in fact, that white world had guaranteed his worth in the most brutal and dramatic manner. Most surely he was was something, in the eyes of the white world, or it would not have threatened him as it had. That white world, then, threatened as much as it beckoned. Though he did not know it, he was fatally in love with that white world, in love in a way that could never be cured. That white world's attempt to curb him dangerously and irresponsibly claimed him for its own."

 * “He had fled a world that he had known and that had emotionally crucified him, but what was he here in this world whose impact loosed storms in his blood? Could he ever make the white faces around him understand how they had charged his world with images of beckoning desire and dread? Naw, naw…No one could believe the kind of life he had lived and was living.

 * .... Above all, he was ashamed of his world, for the world about him had branded his world as bad, inferior. Moreover, he felt no moral strength or compulsion to defend his world. That in him which had always made him self-conscious was now the bud of a new possible life that was pressing ardently but timidly against the shell of the old to shatter it and be free."

The Color Curtain (1956)

 * "I'm an American Negro; as such, I've had a burden of race consciousness. So have these people. I worked in my youth as a common laborer, and I've had a class consciousness. So have these people. I grew up in the Methodist and Seventh Day Adventist churches and I saw and observed religion in my childhood; and these people are religious. I was a member of the Communist Party for twelve years and I know something of the politics and psychology of rebellion.... These emotions are my instruments.... I want to try to use these emotions to try to find out what these people feel and think and why."

 * "The despised, the insulted, the hurt, the dispossessed—in short, the underdogs of the human race were meeting. Here were class and racial and religious consciousness on a global scale. Who had thought of organizing such a meeting? And what had these nations in common? Nothing, it seemed to me, but what their past relationship to the Western world had made them feel. This meeting of the rejected was in itself a kind of judgment upon the Western world!"

Haiku: This Other World (1998)

 * I am nobody: A red sinking autumn sun Took my name away.

 * I give permission For this slow spring rain to soak The violet beds.

 * With a twitching nose A dog reads a telegram On a wet tree trunk.

 * Burning autumn leaves, I yearn to make the bonfire Bigger and bigger.

 * A sleepless spring night: Yearning for what I never had And for what never was.

 * In a drizzling rain, In a flower shop’s doorway, A girl sells herself

 * A slow autumn rain: The sad eyes of my mother Fill a lonely night.

Eight Men (1961)

 * A man who worships in the Seventh-Day Adventist Church lives, psychologically, in a burning and continuous moment that never ends: the present is ever-lasting; the past is telescoped into the now; there is no future and at any moment Christ may come again and then the anxious tension of time will be no more.... [My grandmother] lived with all of us, yet, psychologically, she hovered somewhere off in space.... Always she seemed to be peeping out of Heaven into the world while living in the world.

 * He did not feel that he was stealing, for the cleaver, the radio, the money, and the typewriter were all on the same level of value, all meant the same thing to him. They were the serious toys of the men who lived in the dead world of sunshine and rain he had left, the world that had condemned him, branded him guilty.

 * Maybe anything's right, he mumbled. Yes, if the world as men had made it was right, then anything else was right, any act a man took to satisfy himself, murder, theft, torture.He straightened with a start. What was happening to him? ... He was going to do something, but what? Yes, he was afraid of himself, afraid of doing some nameless thing.

 * He would go there and clear up everything, make a statement. What statement? He did not know. He was the statement, and since it was all so clear to him, surely he would be able to make it clear to others.

The Outsider (1953)

 * “Where could he find such experiences, such spheres of existence? In the main, he accepted the kind of world that the Bible claimed existed; but, for the sufferings, terrors, accidental births, and meaningless deaths of that world, he rejected the Biblical prescriptions of repentance, prayer, faith and grace. He was persuaded that what started on this earth had to be rounded off and somehow finished here.”

 * "The moment we act as if it's true, then it's true."

 * "Negroes, as they enter our culture, are going to inherit the problems we have, but with a  difference. They are outsiders and they are going to know that they have these problems. They  are going to be self‑conscious; they are going to be gifted with a double vision, for, being Negroes, they are going to be both inside and outside of our culture at the same time. Every emotional and cultural convulsion that ever shook the heart and soul of Western man will shake them. Negroes will develop unique and specially defined psychological types. They will become psychological men, like the Jews . . . They will not only be Americans or Negroes; they will be centers of knowing, so to speak . . . The political, social, and psychological consequences of this will be enormous . . ."

 * "Oh, Christ their disease had reached out and claimed him too. He had been subverted by the contagion of the lawless; he had been defeated by that which he had sought to destroy."

 * "Don't think I'm so odd and strange ... I'm not.... I'm legion ... I've lived alone, but I'm everywhere."

 * "Nothing.... Alone a man is nothing.....I wish I had some way to give the meaning of my life to others.... To make a bridge from man to man.... We must find some way of being good to ourselves.... Man is all we've got."

 * "You are your own law, so you'll be your own judge."

On Richard Wright

 * the most powerful and celebrated statement we have yet had of what it means to be a Negro in America is unquestionably Richard Wright's Native Son. The feeling which prevailed at the time of its publication was that such a novel, bitter, uncompromising, shocking, gave proof, by its very existence, of what strides might be taken in a free democracy; and its indisputable success, proof that Americans were now able to look full in the face without flinching the dreadful facts ... Such a book, we felt with pride, could never have been written before-which was true. Nor could it be written today. It bears already the aspect of a landmark; for Bigger [Thomas] and his brothers have undergone yet another metamorphosis; they have been accepted in baseball leagues and by colleges hitherto exclusive; and they have made a most favorable appearance on the national screen. We have yet to encounter, nevertheless, a report so indisputably authentic, or one that can begin to challenge this most significant novel. ... In the thirties, swallowing Marx whole, we discovered the Worker and realized-I should think with some relief-that the aims of the Worker and the aims of the Negro were one. ... As for this New Negro, it was Wright who became his most eloquent spokesman; and his work, from its beginning, is most clearly committed to the social struggle. ... Recording his days of anger he has also nevertheless recorded, as no Negro before him had ever done, that fantasy Americans hold in their minds when they speak of the Negro: that fantastic and fearful image which we have lived with since the first slave fell beneath the lash. This is the significance of Native Son and also, unhappily, its overwhelming limitation…Native Son finds itself at length so trapped by the American image of Negro life and by the American necessity to find the ray of hope that it cannot pursue its own implications.
 * James Baldwin "Many Thousands Gone" in Notes of a Native Son (1955)

 * Richard went to Paris in 1946, when I was 22, he was 38. Now, it took me a long time; I had to get to be much older to realize something. I didn't realize it that day at all. I was not born in Mississippi; I was born in New York. And I did not leave Mississippi to go to Chicago. And endure all that. I was much too young to realize what I was looking at really. But, that's a journey. To go from Mississippi to Chicago to New York to Paris in 38 years is amazing. You might as well have walked all that distance, it's almost that remarkable.
 * James Baldwin at Yale University (2 November 1983)

 * He was much more stern and realistic than I tend to be. I'm not unrealistic, except in the sense that some things are so unpleasant I need to alter them a bit.
 * From a 1994 interview in Conversations with Octavia Butler (2009)

 * He came like a sledgehammer, like a giant out of the mountain with a sledgehammer, writing with a sledgehammer...
 * Historian John Henrik Clarke

 * I clearly remember my introduction to the African American heritage. I was in the school sanatorium with a bad attack of the flu when the headmistress came to see me, bringing copies of Wright's Native Son, Black Boy and Trevor Huddleston's Naught For Your Comfort, I could not put any of the books down.
 * Micere Githae Mugo in Talking with African Writers by Jane Wilkinson

 * Most of the writers with whom I was most impressed were the French and Russian writers of another period. The one American writer who stood out to me was Richard Wright-and Dreiser. I took to their naturalism. I was able to understand so much of the country through them. Certainly I understood Black America because of Richard Wright.
 * Rosa Guy in Conversations with Maya Angelou (1989)

 * Wright was an American phenomenon. Lenin, during the Russian Revolution, looked at the jubilant former serfs who'd changed the course of history. Wouldn't he be thinking also of one like this one when he dreamed of creating a new man? Phenomena-especially Black ones-can't be measured by ordinary standards. Perhaps this is what W. E. B. DuBois had in mind when he said, "We struggle not only for the right of Blacks to be right but also for their right to be wrong!" Wright was a prodigious reader and he never failed to credit the extraordinary 10-year leap from semi-illiterate Black serf to literary giant to his discovery of Marx, Engels and Lenin, which subsequently led to his membership in the Communist Party. Mississippi had taught him to despise capitalist exploitation and injustice.
 * Ollie Harrington, "The Mysterious Death of Richard Wright" in Why I Left America and Other Stories (1994)

 * I would say that Dick was my closest friend. We had a small group, Dick Wright, Chester Himes and myself and we lived and enjoyed French life.
 * Ollie Harrington, Why I Left America and Other Stories (1994)

 * Kierkegaard is one of the great writers of today. He is one of the men who, during the last twenty or thirty years, modern civilization has recognized as a man whose writings express the modern temperament and the modern personality. And Dick assured me that he was reading Kierkegaard because everything he read in Kierkegaard he had known before. What he was telling me was that he was a black man in the United States and that gave him an insight into what today is the universal opinion and attitude of the modern personality. I believe that is a matter that is not only black studies, but is white studies too. I believe that that is some form of study which is open to any university: Federal City College, Harvard, etc. It is not an ethnic matter. I knew Wright well enough to know that he meant it. I didn’t ask him much because I thought he meant me to understand something. And I understood it. I didn’t have to ask him about that. What there was in Dick’s life, what there was in the experience of a black man in the United States in the 1930s that made him understand everything that Kierkegaard had written before he had read it and the things that made Kierkegaard the famous writer that he is today? That is something that I believe has to be studied.
 * C.L.R. James, "Black Studies and the Contemporary Student" (1969)

 * In an era when fiction with political intent was widely condemned, Wright’s haunting novel, with its clear political message, made me unafraid to write a political novel. It also showed me that presenting horrifying actions can serve a powerful literary purpose, and that “shocking” can be high praise.
 * Alix Kates Shulman about Native Son “Five Books that Made me a Feminist” (2019)

 * I was preoccupied with books by black people that approached the subject, but I always missed some intimacy, some direction, some voice. Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright-all of whose books I admire enormously-I didn't feel were telling me something. I thought they were saying something about it or us that revealed something about us to you, to others, to white people, to men. Just in terms of the style, I missed something in the fiction that I felt in a real sense in the music and poetry of black artists. When I began writing I was writing as though there was nobody in the world but me and the characters, as though I was talking to them, or us, and it just had a different sound to it.
 * From a 1981 interview in Danille K. Taylor-Guthrie (ed.) Conversations with Toni Morrison (1994)

 * Richard Wright’s outstanding characteristics are two seemingly opposite tendencies. One is an overwhelming need for association and integration with humanity at large. The other is a tragic, highly individualized loneliness. Except that he is a Negro in 20th century America he might have been a lyric poet. Whenever he describes the life he wants for mankind he rises to great heights of lyric beauty. At the same time when he doubts that a new life can ever be achieved he writes with the same beauty but in tragic despair. Wright wants a new world; men working freely together in social relationships that not only realize a complete personality but develop every potential and result in new associations and new men altogether. He wants to share a common life, not in a regimented sense but in a free interchange of ideas and experience; a relationship which will be the blending of a common belief and a solidarity of ideals. He wants a life in which basic emotions are shared; in which common memory forms a common past; in which collective hope reflects a national future. He has a vision of life where man can reveal his destiny as man by grappling with the world and getting from it the satisfactions he feels he must have. He wants a life where man’s inmost nature and emotional capacities will be used. He has a passionate longing to belong, to be identified with the world at large; he wants the "deep satisfaction of doing a good job in common with others." He doesn’t want a society where he is separate as Negro, but one where he is just another man.
 * Constance Webb, "Notes preliminary to a full study of the work of Richard Wright" (privately published, 1946)

 * So far only Wright has positively revealed the state of mind of a people bursting with energy, untroubled by feudal remains or a feudal past, soaked to the bone in traditions of individual freedom and free association—traditions constantly held before them as the basis of their civilization, yet utterly unrealized in the face of automation and the threat of atomic annihilation.
 * Constance Webb Richard Wright: A Biography (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1968)
 * The biography by Constance Webb (1918–2005) was the first about Wright.

 * By the 1940s there was Richard Wright, a gifted novelist ... His autobiography of 1937, Black Boy, gave endless insights: for instance, how blacks were set against one another, when he told how he was prodded to fight another black boy for the amusement of white men.
 * Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States

title: Richard Wright


text:
User talk:59.167.23.187

sweet as

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: User talk:59.167.23.187


text:
User:59.167.23.187

i am cool

title: User:59.167.23.187


text:
James Otis Jr.

James Otis Jr. (February 5, 1725 – May 23, 1783) was a lawyer in colonial Massachusetts, a member of the Massachusetts provincial assembly, and an early advocate of the political views that led to the American Revolution.

Quotes

 * ALL PRECEDENTS ARE UNDER THE CONTROUL OF THE PRINCIPLES OF THE LAW … No Acts of Parliament can establish such a writ [writ of assistance enabling British search of homes for no reason]: … it would be void, "AN ACT AGAINST THE CONSTITUTION IS VOID." Vid. Viner. But … special writs may be granted on oath and probable suspicion.
 * Massachusetts Spy (April 29, 1773)(Principle of judicial review. In addition, much like the prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution).

 * If we are not represented, we are slaves.
 * Report on the Sugar Act (13 June 1764).

 * England may as well dam up the waters of the Nile, with bulrushes, as to fetter the step of freedom, more proud and firm in this youthful land, than where she treads the sequestered glens of Scotland, or couches herself among the magnificent mountains of Switzerland. Arbitrary principles, like those, against which we now contend, have cost one king of England his life, another, his crown — and they may yet cost a third his most flourishing colonies. We are two millions — one fifth fighting men. We are bold and vigorous, — and we call no man master. To the nation, from whom we are proud to derive our origin, we ever were, and we ever will be, ready to yield unforced assistance; but it must not, and it never can be extorted. Some have sneeringly asked, "Are the Americans too poor to pay a few pounds on stamped paper? No! America, thanks to God and herself, is rich. But the right to take ten pounds, implies the right to take a thousand; and what must be the wealth, that avarice, aided by power, cannot exhaust? True the spectre is now small; but the shadow he casts before him, is huge enough to darken all this fair land.
 * As quoted in The Class Book of American Literature (1826) edited by John Frost, Lesson XLIX : Specimen of the Eloquence of James Otis i extracted from "The Rebels."

Argument Against the Writs of Assistance (1761)

Partial Source: James Otis (February 24, 1761): Against Writs of Assistance. Published by the Constitution Society. Archived from the original on January 16, 2024.

 * The only principles of public conduct that are worthy of a gentleman or a man are to sacrifice estate, ease, health, and applause, and even life, to the sacred calls of his country. These manly sentiments, in private life, make good citizens; in public life, the patriot and the hero. I do not say that, when brought to the test, I shall be invincible. I pray God I may never be brought to the melancholy trial; but, if ever I should, it will then be known how far I can reduce to practice principles which I know to be founded in truth. In the meantime I will proceed to the subject of this writ.

 * An act against the Constitution is void; an act against natural equity is void.

 * Now, one of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one's house. A man's house is his castle; and whilst he is quiet, he is as well guarded as a prince in his castle. This writ, if it should be declared legal, would totally annihilate this privilege. Custom-house officers may enter our houses when they please; we are commanded to permit their entry. Their menial servants may enter, may break locks, bars, and everything in their way; and whether they break through malice or revenge, no man, no court can inquire. Bare suspicion without oath is sufficient.

 * But to show another absurdity in this writ: if it should be established, I insist upon it every person, by the 14th Charles Second, has this power as well as the custom-house officers. The words are: "It shall be lawful for any person or persons authorized," etc. What a scene does this open! Every man prompted by revenge, ill-humor, or wantonness to inspect the inside of his neighbor's house, may get a Writ of Assistance. Others will ask it from self-defence; one arbitrary exertion will provoke another, until society be involved in tumult and in blood.

The Rights of British Colonists Asserted (republicanism I t's not he good of the whole. Salus populi suprema lex esto is the law of nature, and part of that grand charter given the human race (though too many of them are afraid to assert it) by the only monarch in the universe who has a clear and indisputable right to absolute power; because he is the only One who is omniscient as well as omnipotent.
 * Kingcraft and priestcraft have fell out so often, that 'tis a wonder this grand and ancient alliance is not broken off forever. Happy for mankind will it be when such a separation shall take place.

 * The end of the government being the good of mankind points out its great duties: it is above all things to provide for the security, the quiet, the happy enjoyment of life, liberty, and property.

 * If life, liberty, and property could be enjoyed in as great perfection in solitude as in society, there would be no need of government.

 * … [Slave] trade … is the most shocking violation of the law of nature, has a direct tendency to diminish … liberty, and makes every dealer in it a tyrant, from the director of an African company to the petty chapman [peddler]…. The colonists are by the law of nature free-born, as indeed all men are, white or black...It is a clear truth, that those who every day barter away other men's liberty will soon care little for their own.

 * Taxes are not to be laid on the people but by their consent in person or by deputation.

Misattributed

 * Taxation without representation is tyranny.
 * Attributed as a statement by Otis in court in 1761, but no record of the remark has been found prior to the 16th century

title: James Otis Jr.


text:
Big Trouble

Big Trouble is a 2002 comedy thriller film about the slightly surreal misadventures of a handful of people, mostly strangers to each other, who are brought together through various connections to a mysterious metal suitcase, over two nights in Miami.
 * Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld. Written by Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone, based on the novel by Dave Barry.

These people are in big trouble. taglines They have forty-five minutes to save the world. They need forty-six. taglines

Eliot Arnold

 * [v.o.] Arthur Herk: one of the few Floridians who was not confused when he voted for Pat Buchanan.
 * I say we blame this whole evening on rap music and too much violence on television.
 * [After his son has just called him a loser] Okay, now it's my turn. Up yours, you little shithead. Okay, your turn.
 * [v.o.] I had to outrun a plane and subdue two convicts with a nuclear [sic] weapon to earn Matt's respect. But it was worth it.
 * [v.o.] We all go along day after day when suddenly a bomb drops into our lives. Sometimes you can't get out of the way. Sometimes it's a new beginning.
 * [v.o.] What is it that brings two strangers together so that one soul inhabits two bodies? Sometimes it's profound. Sometimes it's Fritos.

Arthur Herk

 * Nina, this is my house, you work for me, and I want to suck your toes.
 * [to his boss] Morning, douchebag.
 * I need a missile.
 * Make her stop! God in heaven, make her stop! SHE WANTS MY SOUL!!!

Henry Desalvo

 * [Whilst pointing a gun at three thugs who walk towards him while he is speaking to his employer on the phone] Not right now, okay?
 * [Whilst watching the chaotic goings-on at Arthur Herk's house] Moron #2 just got Moron #1 all wet.
 * [Whilst watching the chaotic goings-on at Arthur Herk's house] There goes the warranty... and there goes the Iron Chef.
 * Was that a goat?!
 * [Trapped on a delayed plane with idiotic sports fans after a surreal day in Miami] I really feel like killing somebody.

Puggy

 * [Opening the movie] God said to Noah, "I am going to put an end to all people, for the Earth is filled with violence because of them. You are to bring into the Ark two of all living creatures to keep them alive with you." [eats a Frito] In other words, life is hard, so you'd better find someone who'll be your partner. Eliot Arnold's story is a lot like Noah's, except Eliot's story takes place in Miami. [picks up another] You just can't beat these when they're really fresh. [eats it] Anyway, Eliot should probably tell you exactly what happened because I was locked in the trunk of a police car for part of it. My name is Puggy and I live in a tree... I hope I didn't ruin anything for you.

Others

 * Snake: [to Puggy] Next time I see you again, you're dead.
 * Matt Arnold: Uh, Jenny's mom opened the door, and I came running up to squirt her. And then, uh, Mrs. Herk jumped me... jumped on me. And, uh, and then I went down on Jenny... or I f- fell on Jenny.
 * Eddie: Let's get the hell outta here, Snake. I think I hear one of them silent alarms.
 * Snake: [to the Russians] If you assholes try to call the cops after we leave, the next bullet goes through your head.
 * Leonard: If we don't shoot someone soon, I'm gonna forget how.

Dialogue

 * Deeber: [points to his computer monitor] If you want to continue working at this newspaper, you will put something in here before you go home.
 * Eliot Arnold: Why don't I put something in there right now?
 * [He climbs onto Deeber's desk and kicks his shoe straight through the screen.]
 * Eliot Arnold: [v.o.] Deeber picked the wrong day to be a jerk. Earlier that day I found out my wife was having an affair with her tennis instructor.

 * Geo Salesman: Sweet little vehicle. Just get divorced? Ah, it doesn't matter. Forty-two miles to the gallon, AM/FM radio. I'll even throw in the undercoating. Anything else you'd like to know?
 * Matt Arnold: Yeah. How many clowns can it hold?

 * [In the Jolly Jackal Russian's bar; Leo is holding a baseball bat]
 * Leo: Out!
 * Snake: [about Puggy] He broke my ankle!
 * Leo: I break your head!

 * John: You can stay.
 * Puggy: [about the muggers] They took all my money.
 * John: It's okay. Free beer.

 * [Leo has just beat Snake and Eddie with a baseball bat]
 * Puggy: Aluminum, huh?
 * Leo: We sponsor girl's softball team.

 * John: [to Puggy] You want to make five dollars?
 * [Puggy carries the heavy metal suitcase from the van into the bar's stockroom.]
 * John: Lay down gentle, so as not to fall. [Puggy does.] Strong... come back tomorrow one o'clock, maybe I have more job for you.
 * [Later that evening, Puggy is walking down a Miami street and pitches camp in a luxurious home's banyan tree.]
 * Eliot Arnold: [v.o.] After only one day in Miami, Puggy had a more rewarding career and lived in a better neighborhood than I did.

 * [Matt and Andrew are preparing to ambush their classmate, Jenny with a squirt gun, in her home.]
 * Andrew: So, what's the plan? Through the front?
 * Matt Arnold: [sarcastically] Yeah. "It's Matt Arnold. I'm here to kill your daughter, Jenny." No, we gotta go over the wall, dickweed. I just she doesn't see this stupid turdmobile.

 * Leonard: Look at this thing. He's the size of a Buick.
 * Henry Desalvo: She.
 * Leonard: She what?
 * Henry Desalvo: The mosquito is a she.
 * Leonard: How the hell can you tell that?
 * Henry Desalvo: Discovery Channel. Only the female mosquito sucks your blood.
 * Leonard: Sounds like my ex-wife. Bitch.

 * [preparing to ambush Jenny]
 * Matt: Here we go...
 * Andrew: I'll witness from here, in case her dad shoots us.
 * Matt: With what, the remote control?
 * Andrew: This is Miami, he has a gun.

 * Jenny Herk: Good thing you ran away, Arthur, you might have gotten wet.
 * Arthur Herk: Shut up!
 * Officer Monica Romero: Easy...
 * Arthur Herk: Don't tell me easy, this is my goddamn house!
 * Officer Monica Romero: And these are my handcuffs, and if you don't take it easy, you'll be wearing my handcuffs in your goddamn house.

 * Eliot Arnold: Look, I'm sorry that my kid squirted your daughter... I-I mean, I'm sorry that he got her wet... I mean... the way he described it, it was just supposed to be a game.
 * Anna Herk: Well, hey, kids.

 * [Henry is talking on a pay phone]
 * Henry Desalvo: There was another shooter.
 * William Spaulding: What do you mean?
 * Henry Desalvo: What do I mean? What do you mean "what do I mean"? I mean there was another shooter is what I mean.
 * [a bunch of mean-looking gangstas approach him.]
 * William Spaulding: So, did you take care of the job or not?
 * Henry Desalvo: Not.
 * William Spaulding: Did the other shooter take care of it?
 * Henry Desalvo: Uh, hold on a second.
 * [Henry pretends to drop the piece of paper with the phone number on it, bends down to pick it up, and draws a revolver from his ankle holster.]
 * Henry Desalvo: Not right now, okay?
 * Gang Leader: It's cool, man.

 * Arthur Herk: [asked who might have shot his TV set] I'll tell you who did it. It's probably some goddamn kids. 'Cause these goddamn kids today, they all got goddamn guns, and they're all sniffing glue!
 * Officer Monica Romero: Any additional insights, Mr. Herk? Any information can help us to protect you.
 * Arthur Herk: I seriously doubt that you or any other member of the police force in this town could protect their own dicks with both hands.
 * Officer Monica Romero: Thank you for that observation. [to Matt] I'm not gonna arrest you, Matt, unless Mrs. Herk wants to press charges.
 * [Everyone looks at Anna.]
 * Anna Herk: Hey... kids.
 * Arthur Herk: I want to press charges! Cuff him!
 * Officer Monica Romero: My hands are kind of full right now, what with holding my dick and all.

 * Arthur Herk: [to Eliot] Good, now you and your shithead kid can get the hell out of here, and never come back.
 * Eliot Arnold: Thanks for everything.

 * Anna Herk: Listen, I'm sorry my husband's such an idiot.
 * Eliot Arnold: He's probably really upset because someone shot his TV...
 * Anna Herk: No, he's an idiot.
 * Eliot Arnold: Do you think someone's trying to kill him?
 * Anna Herk: God, I hope so!

 * Eliot Arnold: What does a guy like Arthur do for a living?
 * Anna Herk: He's an executive at Penultra Corporation.
 * Eliot Arnold: [chuckles] I did an article on them once. They built the jail downtown where the plumbing doesn't work. I called it, "Crapital Punishment."
 * Anna Herk: Eliot Arnold, from The Herald? I used to read your column! You were so funny. What happened?
 * Eliot Arnold: I lost my sense of humor in the divorce.
 * [Anna laughs]
 * Eliot Arnold: [more seriously] How does a guy like Arthur end up with someone like you?
 * Anna Herk: I married him when Jenny was little. My first husband left us kind of early, and we had to move to this crappy little apartment, and I met Arthur. He was different then. I keep looking up divorce lawyers in the phone book, but then I think about that horrible apartment.
 * Eliot Arnold: It's unavailable. I live there.
 * [She laughs again.]

 * [Eliot and Anna go for a walk on the beach after passionately making out in his office.]
 * Eliot Arnold: Can I get personal?
 * Anna Herk: [laughs] Now you're asking?
 * Eliot Arnold: Your daughter really likes you.
 * Anna Herk: Yeah, we have a pretty good relationship.
 * Eliot Arnold: Your divorce, Arthur... she doesn't throw any of that in your face?
 * Anna Herk: No, I told Jenny a long time ago that I wasn't perfect. She tried to accept my mistakes, and I try to accept hers.
 * Eliot Arnold: Sounds simple.
 * Anna Herk: Well, I mean it wasn't that simple when she came home with that scorpion tattooed on her butt.
 * Eliot Arnold: Matt hates me. He basically thinks I'm a loser. Called me a loser. So I called him a shithead. If we had bad teeth, we could go on Jerry Springer.
 * [Anna laughs.]

 * Jenny Herk: [to Andrew] And you, don't look at my ass when I walk away.
 * Andrew: I can't make that promise.
 * [Jenny scoffs and leaves.]
 * Andrew: Whoa. "You can squirt me tonight down at Bayside." You're gonna remember that line when you're an old dude, dude.
 * Matt Arnold: Are you looking at her ass?
 * Andrew: Yeah.

 * [While approaching the annoying cigar smokers.]
 * Henry Desalvo: Gentlemen; would you mind putting out your cigars, please?
 * Bruce: Come again?
 * Henry Desalvo: I asked, would you mind putting out your cigars, please?
 * Bruce: As a matter of fact I would mind.
 * Henry Desalvo: Well you see the reason I asked -- all due respect -- is because I got a great New York strip over there cost me twenty-seven dollars and change, and it tastes like I'm eating a cigar.
 * Bruce: Well, first of all, Ace: you're eating a steak at a place called "Joe's Stone Crab"? And secondly, there's no rule that says we can't smoke.
 * Henry Desalvo: Well, first of all: My name is not Ace. And number two: I'm not talking about rules, here, I'm talking about manners. You see, there is no rule that says I can't come over here and fart on your entree, but I don't do it. Why? Because it isn't good manners. Now I will ask you again in the nicest way to please, put out the cigars, okay?
 * [Bruce blows smoke in Henry's face and laughs with his friends. Finally snapping, Henry grabs the cigar, snaps Bruce's fingers and puts out his cigar in his drink. Shocked, the others follow suit.]
 * Henry Desalvo: Thank you.
 * Bruce: [Pained] I hope you realize you've just committed assault.
 * Henry Desalvo: I know, I know. You know, I remember time was you actually had to hit somebody.

 * Henry Desalvo: [back at his table] You go tell your employer it's gonna cost him another 10 G's apiece.
 * His Boss: Okay. But we want this finished as soon as possible.
 * Henry Desalvo: Well, believe me, we don't want to spend anymore time in this garden spot than we have to.
 * Leonard: Got that right.

 * [Jenny walks away from Matt and Andrew again.]
 * Matt Arnold: Are you staring at her ass?
 * Andrew: You're not?

 * [about the Gator radioshow]
 * Leonard: What the hell are 'Gators'?
 * Henry Desalvo: Football. College.
 * Leonard: Morons.

 * Pat Greer: Doesn't that just warm the cockles of your heart?
 * Alan Seitz: Warms the shit out of my cockles. My cockles are burning.

 * Pat Greer: Oh, sure, your name is John, and you're just a hard-working, law-abiding citizen running a shithole bar where you got... no customers.
 * John: Is bad location.

 * Alan Seitz: Oh, don't worry, Ivan. It's just your foot. See, this is what we at the bureau call an extremity shot. Generally, the victim survives. They don't do so well with what we call a torso shot.
 * Pat Greer: So what do you think, Ivan? Would you like to experience a torso shot?

 * Eliot Arnold: Strip poker. Strip poker. Now, that's a good game.
 * [Grabs a squirt gun away from Matt]
 * Eliot Arnold: This is a stupid game.
 * Matt Arnold: Dad, no offense, but only a moron would mistake that for a real gun.
 * Eliot Arnold: You could've been killed. And where's your partner in crime?
 * Matt Arnold: Andrew?
 * Jenny Herk: He ran the other way.
 * Eliot Arnold: Did anybody call the police?
 * Anna Herk: [o.s.] I'm making coffee, do you want some?
 * Eliot Arnold: I'll call the police.

 * Henry Desalvo: We have a "Die Hard" situation developing in the kitchen.
 * Leonard: What's happening?
 * Henry Desalvo: Well, either he's going to whack 'em with a rolling pin or bake him a cake. I don't know. Could go either way with this crew.

 * Officer Monica Romero: You're making a big mistake.
 * Snake: Story of my life.

 * [Getting into the hijacked police car]
 * Snake: Let's go.
 * Eddie: I ain't never driven one of these before.
 * Snake: It ain't a spaceship, asshole. Drive.

 * [Having been sprayed by a hallucinogenic toad, Arthur is hallucinating that his dog possesses the head of Martha Stewart]
 * Arthur Herk: Oh, my God! She's coming to get me!
 * Pat Greer: The dog, sir?
 * Arthur Herk: No, not that! Her!
 * Pat Greer: Who?
 * Arthur Herk: You know! Her!
 * Martha Stewart: Herk, Herk, Herk! Herk!
 * Arthur Herk: Oh, my God, she knows my name... She knows everything! She's come to take my soul!
 * Pat Greer: Mr. Herk, this is important...
 * Arthur Herk: Please don't let her take my soul!
 * [Arthur begins sobbing and moaning incoherently]
 * Pat Greer: What the hell's he talking about?
 * Officer Monica Romero: I don't know.
 * Alan Seitz: How close did he get to that toad?
 * Officer Monica Romero: Like face first.
 * Alan Seitz: Bufotenin. Hell of a hallucinogen. He's gone and he's not coming back.
 * Martha Stewart: [growls]
 * Alan Seitz: Discovery Channel.

 * [As Snake, Eddie and the kidnapped Jenny arrive at the airport]
 * Eddie: Okay, we gotta pick a road. Arrivals or departures? We're arriving, but then we're departing. Which one, Snake?
 * Snake: What do you think?
 * Jenny Herk: I think you guys should turn yourselves in and plead not guilty by reason of stupidity.
 * Snake: [looks at the signs] Departures.

 * Snake: [remarking on his gun] Remember. I'm gonna have this thing pointed right at you. So, don't do something stupid.
 * Jenny Herk: How would you even know if I did something stupid?
 * Snake: I'll just know. Believe me, I can tell the difference.

 * Snake: If you don't do like I say, you know what's gonna happen to you, right?
 * Puggy: You're gonna shoot me?
 * Snake: You got that right.

 * Snake: We need four tickets to the Bahamas, one-way, next flight you got.
 * Fly by Air Ticket Agent: Nassau or Freeport?
 * Snake: The Bahamas.
 * Fly by Air Ticket Agent: Nassau and Freeport are in the Bahamas.
 * Snake: [confused] Whichever's next.

 * [At the Airport Security Walk-through]
 * Airport Security Checker: What is this?
 * Snake: A garbage disposal.
 * Airport Security Checker: A garbage disposal?
 * Snake: Portable.
 * Airport Security Checker: You'll have to turn it on.
 * Snake: It's got a timer.
 * [turns the switches of the bomb on]
 * Snake: Grounds up your garbage, while you're out.

 * [In the airplane]
 * Snake: How about we go now?
 * Airplane Captain Justin Hobart: Sir, we have to finish the preflight checklist. It's for your safety, sir.
 * Snake: [points to his gun in his hand] I got my safety right here, asshole.

 * Officer Walter Kramitz: Are you going to help me, or are you just gonna be a big, fat, stupid asshole?
 * Airport Security Chief Ralph Pendick: Strip search.

 * [Henry and Leonard are stuck in the middle of a big traffic jam, just right before the Airport Road]
 * Henry Desalvo: We're gonna miss our flight.
 * Leonard: You see what the problem is?
 * Henry Desalvo: I don't know. There's some kind of commotion up there. There might be something about it on the radio.
 * [He turns on the radio - only to find the two same people arguing on the same phone-in show before turning off the radio in annoyance. After a moment in silence, a goat walks past the car; the two men pause for a moment in stunned silence]
 * Henry Desalvo: [disbelieving] Was that a goat?
 * Leonard: Let's get the hell outta here.

 * [Officer Monica Romero and Agents Greer and Seitz are speeding to the airport.]
 * Officer Monica Romero: [about the suitcase bomb] Where did they get that stuff?
 * Pat Greer: Russia.
 * Officer Monica Romero: Don't the Russians have controls on that kind of thing?
 * Pat Greer: You'd faint if you knew. A few months ago, somebody got a warhead out of a missile-dismantlement facility in a place called...
 * Alan Seitz: Sergiyev Posad. Not far from Moscow. Beautiful churches there. [off their looks] Travel Channel.
 * Pat Greer: Anyway, somebody who knew what they were doing modified it. Dumped it on some guys who run a place here called The Jolly Jackal.
 * Officer Monica Romero: The bar?
 * Pat Greer: That bar has more AK-47s than Budweiser.

 * Officer Monica Romero: [about the suitcase bomb in Miami] Well, guess it was bound to happen one day.
 * Alan Seitz: What makes you think this is the first time?
 * Pat Greer: Never mind which time this is. The important thing is we got those assholes trapped at the airport, and until we say further, no plane is taking off.
 * Officer Monica Romero: You can do that?

 * [while speeding to the airport, Eliot cuts over to the opposite side, weaving desperately around oncoming cars.]
 * Eliot Arnold: I hope you're not gonna give me a ticket for this.
 * Officer Walter Kramitz: [eyes tightly shut] If I don't see them, I don't write them.

 * [at the airport, Leonard trips and his hunting rifle goes flying onto the pavement (again). He and Henry freeze when they see FBI Agents Greer and Seitz and Officer Romero standing there.]
 * Pat Greer: Your jurisdiction.
 * [He and Seitz move off. Romero picks up the rifle, removes the bolt, and tosses the rifle back to the ground.]
 * Officer Monica Romero: [holding the bolt] Gentlemen. [leaves]
 * Henry DeSalvo: ...Well, Miami sucks. But the cops are kind of nice.
 * Leonard Ferroni: You got that right.

 * Airport Officer Arch Ridley: [Agent Greer just pushed him up against a support wall] Name's Arch Ridley. Tell me what you need. Please don't kill me.
 * Pat Greer: We're tracking a couple of scumbags, with one, maybe two hostages and a big metal suitcase. Anybody in this crackerjack system of yours see anything like that?

 * Officer Monica Romero: [lowering her voice] You're going to shoot that plane down? You can't do this! There's innocent people on that plane!
 * Pat Greer: If that nuke goes off over Freeport, many innocent people die. Now, nobody likes this, okay? But this has been discussed, believe me, as high as it can be, every scenario, and this is the only way out.
 * Officer Monica Romero: How soon?
 * Pat Greer: When the plane's over the Gulf Stream. Three minutes.
 * Officer Monica Romero: Well, what about the kid's father? Maybe he made it onto the plane.
 * Pat Greer: Let's say he did. Is he, by any chance, familiar with a Russian nuclear warhead with a plutonium rod encased in a terillium core?
 * Officer Monica Romero: I believe he's in advertising.

 * Eliot Arnold: [as Snake clings onto a set of stairs] Let go of the suitcase!
 * Snake: The Kingpin will never let go of the Kingpin's suitcase! [opens fire on him]
 * Airplane Captain Justin Hobart: It's a bomb! It's a bomb! Get it off the plane!
 * [Eliot grabs an emergency lever...]
 * Eliot Arnold: [to Snake] Have it your way!
 * [...And pulls it, jettisoning the stairs and sending Snake and the suitcase plummeting towards the ocean.]

 * Anna Herk: Let's take it slow.
 * Eliot Arnold: Absolutely.
 * [They grab each other and kiss passionately.]
 * Eliot Arnold: [v.o.] We were married a week after Anna's divorce.

 * Arthur Herk: Make her stop! God in heaven! Make her stop! She wants my soul!!!
 * Martha Stewart: Arugula! Arugula! Arrrrrrrrugula!

Cast

 * Tim Allen - Eliot Arnold
 * Rene Russo - Anna Herk
 * Stanley Tucci - Arthur Herk
 * Tom Sizemore - Snake Dupree
 * Johnny Knoxville - Eddie Leadbetter
 * Dennis Farina - Henry Desalvo
 * Jack Kehler - Leonard Ferroni
 * Janeane Garofalo - Miami PD Officer Monica Romero
 * Patrick Warburton - Miami PD Officer Walter Kramitz
 * Ben Foster - Matt Arnold
 * Zooey Deschanel - Jenny Herk
 * Dwight "Heavy D" Myers - FBI Special Agent Pat Greer
 * Omar Epps - FBI Special Agent Alan Seitz
 * Jason Lee - Puggy
 * Sofía Vergara - Nina

title: Big Trouble


text: User:Howrealisreal~enwikiquote

title: User:Howrealisreal~enwikiquote


text:
User talk:Howrealisreal~enwikiquote

Your account will be renamed
Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called Howrealisreal. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name Howrealisreal~enwikiquote that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name.

Your account will still work as before, and you will be credited for all your edits made so far, but you will have to use the new account name when you log in.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours, Keegan Peterzell Community Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation 23:24, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Renamed
 This account has been renamed as part of single-user login finalisation. If you own this account you can |log in using your previous username and password for more information. If you do not like this account's new name, you can choose your own using this form after logging in: . -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 05:49, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:Howrealisreal~enwikiquote


text:
Big L

Lamont Coleman (May 30, 1974 – February 15, 1999), better known as Big L, was an American rap artist.

Sourced

 * 'Cause phony faggots I froze, it's a fact, I flip fast on foes with fabulous fantastic flows
 * L is the rebel type, I'm rough as a metal pipe, fuck a Benz 'cause I can pull skins on a pedal bike
 * I pack a gat, not a slingshot; step to this and get an ass whooping like Rodney King got
 * MCs be bragging about cash they collect, but them chumps are like Ray Charles cause they ain't seen no money yet
 * "Represent", Showbiz & A.G., Runaway Slave (1992)

 * The Big L was cold crazy, A top-notch crook snatchin' pocket books from old ladies
 * I told him, "Give up the dough, before you get smoked! Oh you broke? ( *shots* ) Now you're dead broke"
 * My name is L and I'm from a part of town where clowns, Get beat down and all you hear is gunshot sounds
 * 'Cause at nighttime niggas try to tax, they're sneakier than alley cats, that's why I carry gats
 * "Lifestylez ov da Poor and Dangerous", Lifestylez ov da Poor and Dangerous (1995)

 * In a street brawl, I strike men quicker than lightnin', you seen what happened in my last fight, friend? Aight, then! L's a clever threat, a lyricist who never sweat, comparing yourself to me is like a Benz to a Chevrolet
 * And my raps is unbelievable like aliens and flying saucers, no more iron horses 'cause I'm buying Porsches
 * My run is like Machine Gun Kelly, with a black skully, put one in your belly, leave you smelly, then take your Pelle Pelle
 * And yes I'm living slick and my pockets are thick, I need surgery to get chicks removed from my dick
 * "M.V.P.", Lifestylez ov da Poor and Dangerous (1995)

 * I got styles you can't copy bitch, its the triple six in the mix, straight from H-E-double hockey sticks
 * Every Sun-day a nun lay from my gun spray, fuck Carlito we doin' shit the Devil's son's way
 * Every minute my style switches up, they say a real man won't hit a girl - then I aint real 'cause I beat bitches up
 * I'm takin' lives for a great price, I'm the type to snap in heaven with a Mac-11 and rape Christ
 * L's the nigga that crime follows, I'm hittin fine models and stabbin' punks with broken wine bottles
 * I beat chumps till they head splits, break 'em like breadsticks, I sex chicks, I'd even fuck a dead bitch
 * Always sprayin TECs because I be stayin' vexed, some nigga named Dex was in the projects layin threats
 * I jumped out the Lincoln, left him stinkin', put his brains in the street, now you can see what he was just thinkin'
 * "Danger Zone", Lifestylez ov da Poor and Dangerous (1995)

 * I'm living up to my extortion image, I be stalking Lenox, catching more bodies than abortion clinics
 * A kid tried to take L out, shot me in the chest with a TEC, I just laughed and spit the shell out
 * A nigga hit me with a can of beer, then he ran in fear, later they found him hanging from a chandelier
 * I'm placin' snitches inside lakes and ditches, and if I catch AIDS I'ma start rapin' bitches
 * "Devil's Son", (1993)

 * I'm makin ducks' shed much tears, I buck queers, I don't have it all upstairs but who the fuck cares?
 * The Big L be lighting niggas like incense, getting men lynched, to win tits, I'm killing infants for ten cents
 * 'Cause I'm a street genius, with a unique penis, got fly chicks on my dick that don't even speak English
 * A Tec-9 is my utensil, Fillin' niggas with so much lead they could use they dick for a pencil
 * I'm known for snatching purses, and bombing churches, I get more pussy by accident than most niggas get on purpose
 * I got drug spots from New York to Canada, cause Big L be fucking with more keys (kis) than a janitor
 * "Da Graveyard", Lifestylez ov da Poor and Dangerous, 1995

 * I cook the mic like a beef steak cause my technique's great, and I'm the nigga police hate in each state
 * Ayo my crew be deliverin' hot lead when gats I clench, rappers I jack and lynch, nobody could fuck with the way I be killing up shit in rap events
 * Big L is that nigga you expect to catch rep on any cassette deck, I'm so ahead of my time my parents haven't met yet
 * I'm feelin' like Billy Bathgate, my rap style is past great, I love to fuck a bitch from the back and watch her ass shake
 * I probably got your mommy strung, niggas hear me and take more notes than Conny Chung, my clan plans to get Giuliani hung
 * I got slugs for snitches, no love for bitches, puttin' thugs in ditches when my trigger finger itches
 * I'm known for yokin' jacks and beatin' 'em wit smokin' gats, leavin token blacks with broken backs and open caps
 * I ran up on a nigga named Mac in a black 'Ac, put the gat to his cap, click clack, sorry jack but get up outta that
 * "7 Minute Freestyle"

 * They wanna know why, I'm so fly, a girl asked me for a ring and I put one around her whole eye
 * I'm looking nothing like ya poppa, I wouldn't give a chick ten cents, to put cheese on a whopper.
 * "No Endz No Skinz", Lifestylez ov da Poor and Dangerous, (1995)

 * I'm makin' rap hits, I snap flicks and mack chicks, just the slim ones, you won't see L with no fat bitch
 * "Don't Front Freestyle"

 * I got more riches than you, fuck more bitches than you, only thing I haven't got is more, stitches than you, fuckin punk, you ain't a leader, what? nobody followed you; you was never shit, your mother shoulda swallowed you
 * Shut your mouth up before I buck lead and make a lot of blood shed, turn your tux red, I'm far from broke got enough bread, And mad hoes: ask Beavis I get nothin' but head (Butthead)
 * You lame-ass nigga, no dough, always on the train-ass nigga, Canal street, 10-karat-chain-ass nigga, you got fucked upstate, you cupcake, how many dicks can your butt take?
 * I ran through every bitch in my path, I was fuckin' chicks in the ass when I was six-and-a-half
 * I'ma take you out ya misery, and after this they gonna put you in the Social Study book, 'cause you History
 * "98 Freestyle Full", (1998)

 * Aiyyo; I heard your single, you better make a whole new song
 * If they said that shit is hot then they told you wrong
 * Clown niggas, you ain't got a chance at all
 * Big L Corleone too advanced for y'all
 * I make moves and boss all across the world
 * So don't be upset if I toss your girl
 * I got cheddar to blow, pockets never get low
 * Bitches sweat me wherever I go
 * I cruise in a GS Lex', Cartier specs
 * Nautica sweats with the fresh Gortex
 * Jewels with baguettes, swingin like the Mets
 * Throwin the dice and takin all side bets
 * Never bummy; sip rummy, get money
 * When I hit honies she felt the dick in her dummy
 * On the le-low I see dough from here to Rio
 * Flamboyant Records, C to the E-O - what?
 * "Fall Back", (2000)

title: Big L


text:
User:Vildricianus/monobook.css

/* see wikt:User:Vildricianus/universal.css */ @import url(http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=User:Vildricianus/universal.css&action=raw&ctype=text/css);

title: User:Vildricianus/monobook.css


text:
Brock Chisholm

Brock Chisholm (18 May 1896 – 4 February 1971) was a Canadian First World War veteran, medical practitioner, and the first Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), from 1948 to 1953. He was named Humanist of the Year 1959.

Quotes

 * The re-interpretation and eventually eradication of the concept of right and wrong which has been the basis of child training, the substitution of intelligent and rational thinking for faith in the certainties of the old people, these are the belated objectives of practically all effective psychotherapy.
 * Brock Chisholm (1946) The Psychiatry of Enduring Peace and Social Progress. p. 5

 * The world was sick, and the ills from which it was suffering were mainly due to the perversion of man, his inability to live at peace with himself. The microbe was no longer the main enemy; science was sufficiently advanced to be able to cope with it admirably. If it were not for such barriers as superstition, ignorance, religious intolerance, misery and poverty.
 * Quoted in: Eubanas, Froilan. "Public health, a progressive science." Monthly Bulletin of the Philippine Health Service. 24 (1948): 1.

 * Children must be free to think in all directions irrespective of the peculiar ideas of parents who often seal their children's minds with preconceived prejudices and false concepts of past generations. Unless we are very careful, very careful indeed, and very conscientious, there is still great danger that our children may turn out to be the same kind of people we are.
 * Quoted in: Minteer, Catherine. "What We Observed in Teaching General Semantics." Et cetera 61 (2004): 482–86.

title: Brock Chisholm