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The Good Lord Bird QUOTES

The Good Lord Bird QUOTES

1 " Not a week after Annie put her foot in Mrs. Huffmaster's duff, the Captain upped and laid down the date. "

― James McBride , The Good Lord Bird

2 " I come to the understanding that maybe what was on the inside was more important, and that your outer covering didn't count so much as folks thought it did, colored or white, man or woman. "

― James McBride , The Good Lord Bird

3 " The old face, crinkled and dented with canals running every which way, pushed and shoved up against itself for a while, till a big old smile busted out from beneath 'em all, and his grey eyes fairly glowed. It was the first time I ever saw him smile free. A true smile. It was like looking at the face of God. And I knowed then, for the first time, that him being the person to lead the colored to freedom weren't no lunacy. It was something he knowed true inside him. I saw it clear for the first time. I knowed then, too, that he knowed what I was - from the very first. "

― James McBride , The Good Lord Bird

4 " That was the Old Man’s favorite song. “Blow Ye Trumpet.” Them Negroes was far away from the doings on the plaza where the Old Man was to hang, way out from it. But they sang it loud and clear….
Blow ye trumpet blow
Blow ye trumpet blow….
You could hear their voices for a long way, seemed like they lifted up and carried all the way into the sky, lingering in the air long afterward. And up above the church, high above it, a strange black-and-white bird circled ‘round, looking for a tree to roost on, a bad tree, I expect, so he could alight upon it and get busy, so that it would someday fall and feed the others. "

― James McBride , The Good Lord Bird

5 " Whatever he believed, he believed. It didn’t matter to him whether it was really true or not. He just changed the truth till it fit him. He was a real white man. "

― James McBride , The Good Lord Bird

6 " He was like everybody in war. He believed God was on his side. Everybody got God on their side in a war. Problem is, God ain’t tellin’ nobody who He’s for. "

― James McBride , The Good Lord Bird

7 " Some things in this world just ain't mean to be, not in the times we want 'em to, and the heart has to hold it in this world as a remembrance, a promise for the world that's to come. There's a prize at the end of all of it, but still, that's a heavy load to bear. "

― James McBride , The Good Lord Bird

8 " The Good Lord Bird don't run in a flock. He Flies alone. You know why? He's searching. Looking for the right tree. And when he sees that tree, that dead tree that's taking all the nutrition and good things from the forest floor. He goes out and he gnaws at it, and he gnaws at it till the thing gets tired and it falls down. And the dirt from it raises other trees. It gives them good things to eat. It makes 'em strong. Gives 'em life. And the circle goes 'round. "

― James McBride , The Good Lord Bird

9 " It occurred to me then that you is everything you are in this life at every moment. And that includes loving somebody. If you can't be your own self, how can you love somebody? How can you be free? That pressed on my heart like a vise right then. Just mashed me down. "

― James McBride , The Good Lord Bird

10 " Whatever you is, Onion," he said, "be it full. "

― James McBride , The Good Lord Bird

11 " God gived you the seed. But the watering and caring of that seed is up to you. "

― James McBride , The Good Lord Bird

12 " This is what happens when a boy becomes a man. You get stupider. "

― James McBride , The Good Lord Bird

13 " We all got to die," she said. "But dying as your true self is always better. God'll take you however you come to Him. But it's easier on a soul to come to Him clean. You're forever free that way. From top to bottom. "

― James McBride , The Good Lord Bird

14 " ...for one thing you learns when you is a girl is that most women's hearts is full of secrets. "

― James McBride , The Good Lord Bird

15 " She wore a flowered blue dress of the type whores naturally favored, and that thing was so tight that when she moved, the daisies got all mixed up with the azaleas. She walked like a warm room full of smoke. "

― James McBride , The Good Lord Bird

16 " A body can't prosper if a person don't know who they are. That makes you poor as a pea, not knowing who you are inside. That's worse than being anything in the world on the outside. "

― James McBride , The Good Lord Bird

17 " The Negro comes in many colors. Dark. Black. Blacker. Blackest. Blacker than night. Black as hell. Black as tar. "

― James McBride , The Good Lord Bird

18 " Everybody got God on their side in war. Problem is, God ain't tellin' nobody who He's for. "

― James McBride , The Good Lord Bird

19 " The Old Man's prayers was more sight than sound, really, more sense than sensibility. You had to be there: the aroma of burnt pheasant rolling through the air, the wide, Kansas prairie about, the smell of buffalo dung, the mosquitoes and wind eating at you one way, and him chawing at the wind the other. He was a plain terror in the praying department "

― James McBride , The Good Lord Bird

20 " It occurred to me then that you is everything you are in this life at every moment. "

― James McBride , The Good Lord Bird