Carrie Lam Quotes

Well, now, if I didn’t think you sewed his collar with white thread, but it’s black.” “Why, I did sew it with white! Tom!” But Tom did not wait for the rest. As he went out at the door he said: “Siddy, I’ll lick you for that.” In a safe place Tom examined two large needles which were thrust into the lapels of his jacket, and had thread bound about them—one needle carried white thread and the other black. He said: “She’d never noticed if it hadn’t been for Sid. Confound it! sometimes she sews it with white, and sometimes she sews it with black. I wish to geeminy she’d stick to one or t’other—I can’t keep the run of ’em. But I bet you I’ll lam Sid for that. I’ll learn him!” He was not the Model Boy of the village. He knew the model boy very well though—and loathed him. Within two minutes, or even less, he had forgotten all his troubles. Not because his troubles were one whit less heavy and bitter to him than a man’s are to a man, but because a new and powerful interest bore them down and drove them out of his mind for the time—just as men’s misfortunes are forgotten in the excitement of new enterprises. This new interest was a valued novelty in whistling, which he had just acquired from a negro, and he was suffering to practise it undisturbed. It consisted in a peculiar bird-like turn, a sort of liquid warble, produced by touching the tongue to the roof of the mouth at short intervals in the midst of the music—the reader probably remembers how to do it, if he has ever been a boy. Diligence and attention soon gave him the knack of it, and he strode down the street with his mouth full of harmony and his soul full of gratitude. He felt much as an astronomer feels who has discovered a new planet—no doubt, as far as strong, deep, unalloyed pleasure is concerned, the advantage was with the boy, not the astronomer. The summer evenings were long. It was not dark, yet.

For many years, Blanche worried that it was fear which sometimes made her reluctant to meet white people's eyes, particularly on days when she had the loneliest or the unspecified blues. She'd come to understand that her desire was to avoid pain, a pain so old, so deep, its memory was carried not in her mind, but in her bones. Some days she simply didn't want to look into the eyes of people likely raised to hate, disdain, or fear anyone who looked like her. It was not always useful to be in touch with race memory. The thought of her losses sometimes sucked the joy from her life for days at a time.

You can't carry it with you, and 'tis that that frighten me. It frighten the life out of me sometimes [...] I ask myself why. Why can't you take it with you, and if it ain't matter what you do or not do since it all got to go in the six-foot hole. [...] Sometimes to tell the truth I wonder what it feel like to die. [...] I get so frighten sometimes when I ask myself what next, and I ain't see no answer comin' to help. [...] 'Tis a hell of a thing, Ma, to have to live with something inside you that you don't know. (p.87)

I want to gain immortality because of my brain and not because of the potential of my womb. I cast about for much of my life oking for a way in, inside myself. The desire to be an artist is something that burns inside of me all of my life but I can't get it out, l just don't know how to make anything, my hands are not skilled, they are as useful as two clay lumps. I don't have the patience to sit in the quiet. I want whatever it is to reveal itself to me now. I try dancing, drawing, sculpture, performance art, poetry. I am overwrought and sentimental. lam a lovesick teenager in tone and this does not make great art. Wantingto be an artist and being one are different. Perhaps I am just like everyone else and my disappointment is desiring to be special but not being special at all. Perhaps my life's purpose is to square myself with this. Toyin Ojih Odutola talks of our generation having to accept a hard truth that we may be the stepping stone to something greater in the future because it's not us. On a familial level, there are stories of Jim Carrey and Hanif Kureishi's fathers wanting to be writers and performers but not making it and of the guilt their children have to carry of their parent's unfulfilled dreams in tandem with their success. Maybe this is me. I am the fathers caught in an unchosen generation. I will have to learn how to amplify who comes next. I am the stepping stone because it is not me. I am mediocre I have the will and desire but ultimately zero talent. I have to reconcile myself to being ordinary. I am like everybody else.