Home > Work > The Water is Wide
21 " My poor boat poked along the waterway with the blinding speed of a manatee. "
― Pat Conroy , The Water is Wide
22 " Among the peoples of the world I am not universally admired for the bell-like clarity of my diction. Words slide out of my mouth like fat fish. Having lived my life in various parts of Georgia, Virginia, and the Carolinas and having been sired by a gruff-talking Marine from Chicago and a grits-and-gravy honey from Rome, Georgia, what has remained is an indefinable nonspeech, flavored subtly with a nonaccent, and decipherable to no one, black or white, on the American continent. "
23 " Bernie could talk a Baptist into burning a Bible, "
24 " I was becoming convinced that the world was a colorful, variegated grab bag full of bastards. But "
25 " I was afforded a glimpse of the marsh at ease, a glimpse of the land at rest from the penetration and mindless barbarisms of man. "
26 " Ezra was smooth as good bourbon, the consummate politician who could talk honey as well as he could act vinegar. "
27 " By now accustomed to Billie’s personal flamboyancies, I "
28 " my middle-class background had not prepared me for life without scented toilet paper. "
29 " Piedmont could fire me, bawl me out, abuse me, put it on my record that I was an incorrigible son of a bitch, make sure I never taught in South Carolina again, or cut off my teacher’s pension. That was all he could do. His power was economic and emotional, not spiritual or supernatural. Compared to the river that flowed even as we stared sullenly at each other, Piedmont was a nothing and so was I. "
30 " The board members came in singly and in pairs. They were mostly a lot of calories under gray suits, a lot of talk behind bright ties, "
31 " let them feel the hurt and sorrow of history. "
32 " that life was good, but it was hard; we would prepare to meet it head on, but we would enjoy the preparation. "
33 " White guilt, that nasty little creature who rested on my left shoulder, prevented me from challenging Mrs. Brown on this or any other point. At this time of my life a black man could probably have handed me a bucket of cow piss, commanded me to drink it in order that I might rid my soul of the stench of racism, and I would have only asked for a straw. Blacks who have gone through the civil rights struggle have met a hundred white boys and girls who would dive head first in a septic tank to prove their liberation from the sins of their fathers. "
34 " In the fantasy of the races conceived in my mind, all blacks were noble people who had struggled against a repressive social order for years and who were finally reaping the tangible rewards of this struggle. All whites, especially myself, were guilty of heinous, extraordinarily brutal crimes against humanity. "
35 " I saw the necessity of living and accepting bullcrap in my midst. It was everywhere. "
36 " symbiotic "
37 " Of the Yamacraw children I can say little. I don’t think I changed the quality of their lives significantly or altered the inexorable fact that they were imprisoned by the very circumstance of their birth. "
38 " an untranslatable potpourri of grunts and monosyllables, punctuated only by Prophet’s beautifully effusive smiles. "
39 " Bernie emerged from a cluster of giggling girls when he saw me, raised his cigar in salute, then ran over to my car. “You missed it, boy. You missed the greatest welcome since Caesar returned to Rome. "
40 " Yamacraw is beautiful because man has not yet had time to destroy this beauty. "