Nickel Boys Turner Quotes

How's that training coming along, Griff? Good old Max says you're a natural." Turner frowned. Any time a white man asked you about yourself, they were about to fuck you over.

You can change the law but you can’t change people and how they treat each other. Nickel was racist as hell—half the people who worked here probably dressed up like the Klan on weekends—but the way Turner saw it, wickedness went deeper than skin color. It was Spencer. It was Spencer and it was Griff and it was all the parents who let their children wind up here. It was people.

That’s true,” Turner said. “That doesn’t mean I can’t see how it works. Maybe I see things more clearly because of it.” He made a face as the soap powder gave him a kick. “The key to in here is the same as surviving out there—you got to see how people act, and then you got to figure out how to get around them like an obstacle course. If you want to walk out of here.

Turner had never met a kid like Elwood before. Sturdy was the word he returned to, even though the Tallahassee boy looked soft, conducted himself like a goody-goody, and had an irritating tendency to preach. Wore eyeglasses you wanted to grind underfoot like a butterfly. He talked like a white college boy, read books when he didn't have to, and mined them for uranium to power his own personal A-bomb. Still--sturdy.

In some ways Turner had been telling Elwood’s story ever since his friend died, through years and years of revisions, of getting it right, as he stopped being the desperate alley cat of his youth and turned into a man he thought Elwood would have been proud of. It was not enough to survive, you have to live—he heard Elwood’s voice as he walked down Broadway in the sunlight or at the end of a long night hunched over the books. Turner walked into Nickel with strategies and hard-won dodges and a knack for keeping out of scrapes. He jumped over the fence on the other side of the pasture and into the woods and then both boys were gone. In Elwood’s name, he tried to find another way. Now here he was. Where had it taken him?

Elwood took the long way back, around the trails that circumnavigated Boot Hill and took him past the stables and laundry. He was slow with his steps. He didn’t want to know if Turner had been intercepted, or if the boy had ratted on him or simply taken his letter up to his hideout and put a match to it. Whatever waited for him on the other side would still be waiting for him whenever he got there, so he whistled a tune he remembered from when he was little, a blues tune. He didn’t recall the words or whether it had been his father or mother who sang it, but he felt good whenever the song snuck up on him, a kind of coolness like the shadow of a cloud out of nowhere, something that broke off something bigger. Yours briefly before it sailed on its way.

Turner let the work speak for itself. Harper wanted to be certain about Elwood's comfort with his new detail. 'You don't look surprised,' the young white man said. 'It has to end up somewhere,' Elwood responded. 'How things are done. Spencer tells me where to go, and he kicks it up to Director Hardee.' Harper fiddled the dial after more rock and roll: Elvis popped up again. He was everywhere. 'It used to be worse in the old days,' Harper said, 'from what my aunt says. But the state cracked down and now we lay off the south-campus stuff.' Meaning, they old sold the black students' supplies. 'We had this god old boy who used to run Nickel, Roberts, who would've sold the air you breathe if he could've. Now that was a crook!' 'Beats cleaning the toilets,' Turner said. 'Beats cutting grass, if you ask me.' It was nice to be out, and Elwood said so.

What about their family? How many boys you know here got family? Or got family that cares about them? Not everyone is you, Elwood. Turner got jealous when Elwood's grandmother visited and brought him snacks, and it slipped out from time to time. Like now. The blinders Elwood wore, walking around. The law was one thing-- you can march and wave signs around and change a law if you convinced enough white people. In Tampa, Turner saw the college kids with their nice shirts and ties sit in at Woolworths. He had to work, but they were out protesting. And it happened-- they opened the counter. Turner didn't have the money to eat there either way. You can change the law but you can't change people and the way they treat each other. Nickel was racist as h***--half the people who worked here probably dressed up like the Klan on the weekends--but the way Turner saw it, wickedness went deeper than skin color. It was Spencer. It was Spencer and it was Griff and it was all the parents who let their children wind up here. It was people. Which is why Turner brought Elwood out to the two trees. To show him something that wasn't in books.