“As far as I m concerned the last good man went when Elvis died.”
“Women don t realize how much store men set on the regularity of their habits. We absorb their comings and goings into our bodies, their rhythms into our bones.”
“Cats, like men, are flatterers.”
“Throughout the course of the day, Bobby Tom s irritation over his artificially oiled and dirt-smeared chest and his unzipped jeans had flared into righteous indignation. They were treating him like a sex object! It was damned demeaning, that s what it was, being reduced to a set of oil pecs and a tight ass. Shit. A dozen years in the NFL, and this was what it had all come down to. Pecs and ass.”
“Black man cleans the streets but mustn t walk freely on the pavement; Black man must build houses for the white man but cannot live in them; Black man cooks the white man s food but eats what is left over. Don t listen to anyone bluff you and say Black and white are brothers.”
“To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible. It is to feel shame at the sight of what seems to be unmerited misery. It is to take pride in a victory won by one s comrades. It is to feel, when setting one s stone, that one is contributing to the building of the world.”