Hurricane Carter Quotes

Sometimes we chose the books we want to read and sometimes they chose us.

Men without dignity are like clowns without an audience, pathetic and lost

To live in a world where truth matters and justice—however late—really happens would be heaven right here on earth. Heaven on earth. Dr. Rubin “Hurricane” Carter

Someone once told me his idea for surviving a crash of civilization was to be a lone wolf, heading for the hills, with his rifle and knife, living off the land. "Nowadays, I'm more interested in staying behind and helping others," he said, "like after Hurricane Katrina. Coming together and rebuilding something that can last." "How about BEFORE a disaster?" I asked. "Even better.

The old monk looked amusedly at the young one and said, “Perhaps it is you who should tell me how it feels to carry a beautiful woman. I put the woman down back there by the river, but you are obviously still carrying her.

Here’s the way the law works,” Carter said, “since it’s clear you aren’t smart enough to know. First, there’s an investigation where we gather evidence. Once we have evidence, we arrest people. I don’t care if you’re mayor of the universe. You still can’t direct me to arrest someone without evidence. So either shut up and let me do my job correctly or get in there and clean your own damned kitchen.

To every human being in prison, guilty or innocent, I would say that everything depends upon attitude. The physical body is the vehicle in which we traverse life, but our attitude is our steering wheel. In prison, people find themselves at the bottom of human existence. What a prisoner must say is, OK, whatever I’ve done in life has led me to where I am today. Therefore, if I want to get out of prison and stay out, I’ve got to turn around and go back the other way.

Grace rolled up her sleeves and joined the group in the kitchen, where Gladys, Pablo's wife, had worked all day directing many other women who kept food pouring out the front and side door, onto a long series of folding tables, all covered in checkered paper table cloths. While some of the women prepped and cooked, others did nothing but bring food out and set it on the table- Southern food with a Mexican twist, and rivers of it: fried chicken, chicken and dumplings, chicken mole, shrimp and grits, turnip greens, field peas, fried apples, fried calabaza, bread pudding, corn pudding, fried hush puppies, fried burritos, fried okra, buttermilk biscuits, black-eyed peas, butter bean succotash, pecan pie, corn bread, and, of course, apple pie, hot and fresh with sloppy big scoops of local hand-churned ice creams. As the dinner hours approached, Carter grabbed Grace out of the kitchen, and they both joined Sarah, Carter's friend, helping Sarah's father throw up a half-steel-kettle barbecue drum on the side of the house. Mesquite and pecan hardwoods were quickly set ablaze, and Dolly and the quilting ladies descended on the barbecue with a hurricane of food that went right on to the grill, whole chickens and fresh catfish and still-kicking mountain trout alongside locally-style grass-fed burgers all slathered with homemade spicy barbecue sauce. And the Lindseys, the elderly couple who owned the fields adjoining the orchard, pulled up in their pickup and started unloading ears of corn that had been recently cut. The corn was thrown on the kettle drum, too, and in minutes massive plumes of roasting savory-sweet smoke filled the air around the house. It wafted into the orchards, toward the workers who soon began pouring out of the house.