Spades Quotes

Call a jack a jack. Call a spade a spade. But always call a whore a lady. Their lives are hard enough, and it never hurts to be polite.

A joker is a little fool who is different from everyone else. He's not a club, diamond, heart, or spade. He's not an eight or a nine, a king or a jack. He is an outsider. He is placed in the same pack as the other cards, but he doesn't belong there. Therefore, he can be removed without anybody missing him.

Kitten, this is my best mate, Charles, but you can call him Spade. Charles, this is Cat, the woman I’ve been telling you about. You can see for yourself that everything I’ve said is…an understatement.

I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who would call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one.

Doesn’t he own a shirt?” I asked, grabbing a spade. “Unfortunately, I don’t think so. Not even in the winter. He’s always running around half-dressed.” She groaned. “Its disturbing that I have to see so much of his…skin. Yuck.” Yuck for her. And hot damn for me.

As if Spade's chivalry would allow him to do anything to a woman. The harshest punishment she could imagine him dishing out to Cat would be refusing to open a door for her.

Call a jack a jack. Call a spade a spade. But always call a whore a lady.

And what are you doing with a bloody cat, Charles? Some sort of mascot four our dear Reaper here?" "Not another word," Spade snapped, getting into the car and seating the carrier on his lap. "Ian, trust me--don't," Crispin said

Charles, mate, you fret too much. I'm a grown man, I am, and I can blood my handle." "Handle your blood?" Bones offered dryly. Ian grinned. "Exactly.

Don't you even think of holding back, or I'll...I'll tell Spade you let me get away from you," she improvised. "And that I got mugged," she added for good measure. Cries of "Mon Dieu!" and "That's not fair!" echoed immediately from the two vampires. "I'm a crazy human female, you know I'll do it," Denise warned them

Joel Cairo: You always have a very smooth explanation ready. Sam Spade: What do you want me to do, learn to stutter?

I tried to tell you that it's not Spade in there." "You could have tried harder. I absolutely never needed to know that Ian was pierced down there.

I don't lack for bed partners, so I don't need to scrounge for unwilling scraps.-Spade

I say, look at the melons on that lass,” Ian exclaimed, his gaze now on the TV. “And hung like a stallion, he is.” “Focus, mate,” Spade muttered.

I stop myself from apologizing-because what would I even be sorry for? Existing too loud?

Bones, what is everyone doing in here? Spade, cover up. Frigging vampires think everyone wants to see what they've got." ~Cat

She sighed as she set her spade down before turning to look at him. She was crying. Linus didn’t hesitate as he scooped her up in his arms. She buried her face in his neck, beard tickling his throat. “I am going to bury you right here,” she sobbed. “I’m digging your grave, just so you know.” “I know,” he said, rubbing a hand over her back. “I would expect nothing less.

There are many sources of spirituality; religion may be the most common, but it is by no means the only. Anything that generates a sense of awe may be a source of spirituality. Science does this in spades.

All right, you got that out of your system. Can I get back in the boat without you striking me again? Or should I stay out here enjoying the marine life?" "Why don't you swim around until you find a shark? Then you can discuss how much the two of you have in common

Growing up, I realized quite quickly that people hate being called racist more than they hate racism itself.

A spade is a spade and diplomacy can’t turn it into a fork overnight.

If I have exhausted the justifications, I have reached bedrock and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: 'This is simply what I do.

GATHERING LEAVES Spades take up leaves No better than spoons, And bags full of leaves Are light as balloons. I make a great noise Of rustling all day Like rabbit and deer Running away. But the mountains I raise Elude my embrace, Flowing over my arms And into my face. I may load and unload Again and again Till I fill the whole shed, And what have I then? Next to nothing for weight, And since they grew duller From contact with earth, Next to nothing for color. Next to nothing for use. But a crop is a crop, And who's to say where The harvest shall stop?

A hysterical human? Who hadn't seen that before?

It was clear they weren’t getting any information out of Ian tonight. She, Bones, and Cat followed as Spade supported Ian, almost carrying him up the stairs to then dump him on the bed in a guest room. “Before you go, mate, turn on the telly. Something raunchy, too. Think I’ll rub one off before I sleep.

Great hearts can only be made by great troubles. The spade of trouble digs the reservoir of comfort deeper, and makes more room for consolation.

Spade-“If you’d refrain from slamming my face any more into this dirty rock floor, I’ll do whatever you like,” was his even reply. “Fancy letting my head go?” Cat-“Sure,” I said with an unpleasant snicker, not relinquishing an ounce of pressure. “How about I let you floss with my jugular as well? I don’t think so.

The point for me is to create relationships based on deeper and more real notions of trust. So that love becomes defined not by sexual exclusivity, but by actual respect, concern, commitment to act with kind intentions, accountability for our actions, and a desire for mutual growth.

Sometimes he used a spade in his garden, and sometimes he read and wrote. He had but one name for these two kinds of labor; he called them gardening. ‘The Spirit is a garden,’ said he

My motto is: Always get even. When somebody screws you, screw them back in spades.

Cecily. This is no time for wearing the shallow mask of manners. When I see a spade I call it a spade. Gwendolen. [Satirically.] I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade. It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely different.

I looked at the cards in my hand, the queen of hearts nestled between the king of clubs and the king of spades. No wonder she was smiling.

When shall I be dead and rid Of all the wrong my father did? How long, how long 'till spade and hearse Put to sleep my mother's curse?

I was not the woman who breaks into pieces under the blows of abandonment and absence, who goes mad, who dies. Only a few fragments had splintered off, for the rest I was well. I was whole, whole I would remain. To those who hurt me, I react giving back in kind. I am the queen of spades, I am the wasp that stings, I am the dark serpent. I am the invulnerable animal who passes through fire and is not burned.

The archaeology of grief is not ordered. It is more like earth under a spade, turning up things you had forgotten. Surprising things come to light: not simply memories, but states of mind, emotions, older ways of seeing the world.

They say love and hate are the same, just at different ends of the blade

I am the queen of spades, I am the wasp that stings, I am the dark serpent. I am the invulnerable animal who passes through fire and is not burned.

She'd suggested that he observe other teens for social cues, and he'd done the job in spades. Yesterday after spending the afternoon with the track team, Aelyx had smacked her on the back and yelled, "Good hustle!" after she jogged up the front porch steps.

You'll always love him" he said, as if he'd read her mind. "That doesn't die just because he did, or because you now love me. Your love for him is part of who you are. It's a beautiful part, Denise. Don't be sad of it, and I will never be jealous of it". Denise's eyes overflowed again. Spade was right.

The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one.

Brigid O'Shaughnessy: “I haven't lived a good life. I've been bad, worse than you could know.” Sam Spade “You know, that's good, because if you actually were as innocent as you pretend to be, we'd never get anywhere

Brave words in a room full of pulseless creatures. Spade gave Don a disgusted glance while Rodney just licked his lips. No doubt he was mentally salting and peppering Don.

To-day I think Only with scents, - scents dead leaves yield, And bracken, and wild carrot's seed, And the square mustard field; Odours that rise When the spade wounds the root of tree, Rose, currant, raspberry, or goutweed, Rhubarb or celery; The smoke's smell, too, Flowing from where a bonfire burns The dead, the waste, the dangerous, And all to sweetness turns. It is enough To smell, to crumble the dark earth, While the robin sings over again Sad songs of Autumn mirth." - A poem called DIGGING.

How very kind of her, ' I said. 'I must remember to send her a card.' I'd send her a card alright. It would be the Ace of Spades, and I'd mail it anonymously from somewhere other than Bishop's Lacey.

I don’t straighten my hair because I hate it; I straighten it because everyone else hates it for me.

I don't belong anywhere. I am neither a heart, a diamond, a club, nor a spade. I am neither a King, a Jack, an Eight, nor an Ace. As I am here - I am merely the Joker, and who that is I have had to find out for myself. Every time I toss my head, the jingling bells remind me that I have no family. I have no number - and no trade either. I have gone around observing your activities from the outside. Because of this I have also been able to see things to which you have been blind. Every morning you have gone to work, but you have never been fully awake. It is different for the Joker, because he was put into this world with a flaw: he sees too deeply and too much. Truth is a lonely thing.

Let’s not mince words: the inside of the Sydney casino looks as if Vegas had an illegitimate child with Liberace’s underpants, and that child fell down a staircase and hit its head on the edge of a spade.

This is a valley of ashes--a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.

Two fixed ideas can no more exist together in the moral world than two bodies can occupy one and the same place in the physical world.

Oh, hey. Long time no drown. You’re the one who bragged about spading my mum.” “Anyone who spaded your mum would brag about it,

I rode all day. I cried all night. The moon didn’t glow. The sun didn’t rise. A comet blazed Between my eyes. West and South, Wind and rain. Every way is Just the same. Pray give me a box To hide inside. Pray give me a spade To dig my own grave.

Ian waited outside the airport in the arrivals lane after they collected their bags. He looked at them and his brows rose. “Where’s Denise? And what are you doing with a bloody cat, Charles? Some sort of mascot for our dear Reaper here?” “Not another word,” Spade snapped, getting into the car and seating the carrier on his lap. “Ian, trust me—don’t,” Crispin said before he threw their bags into the boot.

I hate how they have the power to kill my future, kill me. They treat my Black skin like a gun or a grenade or a knife that is dangerous and lethal, when really it’s them. The guys at the top powering everything.

Choose your favorite spade and dig a small, deep hole, located deep in the forest or a desolate area of the desert or tundra. Bury your cell phone and then find a hobby.

The smell of bitch-ass liar is nauseating.

When a man's partner is killed he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you're supposed to do something about it. Then it happens we were in the detective business. Well, when one of your organization gets killed it's bad business to let the killer get away with it. It's bad all around-bad for that one organization, bad for every detective everywhere. Sam Spade

There’s less violence in my world compared to yours,” she insisted. Spade sighed. “No, darling. There are only different reasons for it.

The worker picked up Pakhom’s spade, dug a grave, and buried him - six feet from head to heel, exactly the amount of land a man needs.

Denise's first thought on seeing her blood stain Spade's lips was "oh shit". Then the fire that leapt into his gaze and the way he dominated her mouth in his next kiss made her decide that self-preservation was overrated.

The day you love anyone but yourself is the day I’ll take your marital advice, Ian,” Bones bit back in an icy tone. “Then today is that day,” Ian replied sharply, “for I love you, you wretched, pig-headed guttersnipe. I also love that arrogant, overprivileged dandy smirking at us”—a wave indicted Spade, whose aforementioned smirk vanished—“as well as the emotionally fractured, malfunctioning psychic who sired me. And you, Crispin, love a bloodthirsty hellion who’s probably killed more people in her thirty years than I have in over two centuries of living, so again I say, don’t bother trying to convince her that she isn’t who she is.

You may have learned from your mother or any other hunted woman. Smiling at devils is a useful learned thing. Swallowing discomfort down in spades. Holding it tight in your belly. Ageing on the inside only. Keeping it forever sexy.

But I know dreams are dangerous; they give me too much false hope.

Wild card, got it," Duncan said. "Just like in Crazy Eights. I can be a diamond; I can be a spade. Whatever you need me to be, I'm that thing. That is so me.

Yes,' Spade growled. 'And when you're slapped you'll take it and like it.' He released Cairo's wrist and with a thick open hand struck the side of his face three times savagely.

When I remember you, Randy, I'm going to smile, not cry. You're a part of me. One of the best parts. I just wanted to tell you that." She stopp up, brushing the headstone once more. "And if you meet someone called Giselda," she whispered, "tell her she's still part of Spade, too. A beautiful part. Please thank her for that.

I didn’t invent this twisted system that pits us against each other and makes us do crappy things for status—but I do know how to play it.

When I go into the garden with a spade and dig a bed I feel such an exhilaration and health that I discover that I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what I should have done with my own hands.

Think, Travel, Celebrate, Charm, Decorate, Dress, Live - colorfully

Every philosophy is a foreground philosophy — that is a hermit's judgment: "There is something arbitrary in his stopping here to look back and look around, in his not digging deeper here but laying his spade aside; there is also something suspicious about it." Every philosophy also conceals a philosophy; every opinion is also a hideout, every word also a mask.

By God, the old man could handle a spade. Just like his old man.

Does it help if we're so strong-willed, stubborn, ambitious, and selfish that we always overcome everything in our way no matter what?" asked Wang-mu. "I think those are the pertinent virtues, yes," said Peter. "Then let's do it. That's us in spades.

I’m Chiamaka fucking Adebayo—I don’t need some prick telling me who I am and who I should be.

Even though I know I shouldn’t care, it annoys me that when girls know what they want and how they’re going to get it, they’re seen as cocky. But guys who know what they want? They’re confident or strong.

I don't mind a reasonable amount of trouble.

And I won’t roll over and let someone else take my crown. Not in a million years.

At a conference of sociologists in America in 1977, love was defined as "the cognitive-affective state characterized by intrusive and obsessive fantasizing concerning reciprocity of amorant feelings by the object of the amorance." That is jargon - the practice of never calling a spade a spade when you might instead call it a manual earth-restructuring implement - and it is one of the great curses of modern English.

I'm glad you're still upright, Charles, and the only reason you are is because she didn't have any silver. She'd have staked you right and proper otherwise. She has a tendency to shrivel someone first and then introduce herself afterwards." "That's uncalled for!" I said, insulted at the suggestion that I was homicidal. "Right." Bones let that go. "Kitten, this is my best mate, Charles, but you can call him Spade. Charles, this is Cat, the woman I've been telling you about. You can see for yourself that everything I've said is... an understatement.

By fire, by force”.

There is no problem with the wider culture that you cannot see in the spades in the Christian Church. The rot is in us, and not simple out there. And Christians are making a great mistake by turning everything into culture wars. It's a much deeper crisis.

When you grow up like this, whether it’s in your nature or not, sometimes survival overpowers doing the right thing.

One thing they don’t tell you ’bout the blues when you got ’em, you keep on fallin’ ’cause there ain't no bottom,' sings Emmylou Harris, and she may be right. Perhaps it would help to be told that there is no bottom, save, as they say, wherever and whenever you stop digging. You have to stand there, spade in hand, cold whiskey sweat beaded on your brow, eyes misshapen and wild, some sorry-ass grave digger grown bone-tired of the trade. You have to stand there in the dirty rut you dug, alone in the darkness, in all its pulsing quiet, surrounded by the scandal of corpses.

In the great cities we see so little of the world, we drift into our minority. In the little towns and villages there are no minorities; people are not numerous enough. You must see the world there, perforce. Every man is himself a class; every hour carries its new challenge. When you pass the inn at the end of the village you leave your favourite whimsy behind you; for you will meet no one who can share it. We listen to eloquent speaking, read books and write them, settle all the affairs of the universe. The dumb village multitudes pass on unchanging; the feel of the spade in the hand is no different for all our talk: good seasons and bad follow each other as of old. The dumb multitudes are no more concerned with us than is the old horse peering through the rusty gate of the village pound. The ancient map-makers wrote across unexplored regions, 'Here are lions.' Across the villages of fishermen and turners of the earth, so different are these from us, we can write but one line that is certain, 'Here are ghosts.' ("Village Ghosts")

Note to self: Don’t delete numbers of the people you hate. They might come in handy someday.

How can we find spiritual meaning in a scientific worldview? Spirituality is a way of being in the world, a sense of one’s place in the cosmos, a relationship to that which extends beyond oneself. . . . Does scientific explanation of the world diminish its spiritual beauty? I think not. Science and spirituality are complementary, not conflicting; additive, not detractive. Anything that generates a sense of awe may be a source of spirituality. Science does this in spades. (158-159)

He was obviously on the wrong side of crazy.

We’ve all had f—cking hard lives — doesn’t mean I’m gonna be an asshole about it.

I decided, enough pain. To the lips of their nocturnal happiness I would attach those of my revenge. I was not the woman who breaks into pieces under the blows of abandonment and absence, who goes mad, who dies. Only a few fragments had splintered off, for the rest I was well. I was whole, whole I would remain. To those who hurt me, I react giving back in kind. I am the queen of spades, I am the wasp that stings, I am the serpent. I am the invulnerable animal who passes through fire and is not burned.

No enunciation of the Truth will ever be complete, no method of training will ever be suitable for all temperaments, no one can do more than mark out the little plot of infinity which he intends to cultivate, and thrust in the spade, trusting that the soil may eventually be fruitful and free from weeds so far as the bounds he has set himself extend....

I can ‘fix' the kinks in my hair, but not the kinks in this whole system that hates me and Devon and everyone that looks like us.

People love to reward conventionally attractive people.

In good company your thoughts run, in solitude your thought is still; it goes deeper and makes for itself a deeper groove, delves. Delve meansa 'dig with a spade'; it means hard work. In talk your mind can be stretched, widened, exhilarated to heights but it cannot be deepened; you have to deepen it yourself. It needs sturdiness. You will be lonely, you will be depressed; you must expect it; if you were training your body it would ache and be tired. It is worth it. There is a Hindu proverb which says: 'You only grow when you are alone'.

Sooner or later your fingers close on that one moist-cold spud that the spade has accidentally sliced clean through, shining wetly white and giving off the most unearthly of earthly aromas. It's the smell of fresh soil in the spring, but fresh soil somehow distilled or improved upon, as if that wild, primordial scene has been refined and bottled: eau de pomme de terre. You can smell the cold inhuman earth in it, but there's the cozy kitchen to, for the smell of potatoes is, at least by now, to us, the smell of comfort itself, a smell as blankly welcoming as spud flesh, a whiteness that takes up memories and sentiments as easily as flavors. To smell a raw potato is to stand on the very threshold of the domestic and the wild. (241)

Donald Watson, who founded The Vegan Society in 1944 and who lived a healthy, active life until passing on in 2005, maintained that dairy products, such as milk, eggs, and cheese, were every bit as cruel and exploitive of sentient animal life as was slaughtering animals for their flesh: “The unquestionable cruelty associated with the production of dairy produce has made it clear that lactovegetarianism is but a half-way house between flesh-eating and a truly humane, civilised diet, and we think, therefore, that during our life on earth we should try to evolve sufficiently to make the ‘full journey.’” He also avoided wearing leather, wool or silk and used a fork, rather than a spade in his gardening to avoid killing worms. Let us instil in others the reverence or life that Donald Watson had and that he passed on to us.

Then the person I least expected to take my side strolled into the kitchen, wearing nothing but a bed sheet wrapped around his hips. "Why do you bother, Crispin? You married a fighter, so stop trying to convince her that the sidelines suit her better." "The day you love anyone but yourself is the day I'll take your marital advice, Ian," Bones bit back in an icy tone. "Then today is that day," Ian replied sharply, "for I love you, you wretched, pig-headed guttersnipe. I also love that arrogant, overprivileged dandy smirking at us"—a wave indicted Spade, whose aforementioned smirk vanished—"as well as the emotionally fractured, malfunctioning psychic who sired me. And you, Crispin, love a bloodthirsty hellion who's probably killed more people in her thirty years than I have in over two centuries of living, so again I say, don't bother trying to convince her that she isn't who she is.

Three hard, loud bangs, followed by a bellow of “Open this door!” had her jumping in the next second, startled. “What the hell?” Spade muttered, letting her go to fling the door open with a scowl. Ian stood on the other side. “What is wrong with you, banging on like that?” Spade demanded. Ian cast a wicked look at Spade, who wore only his shirt, and then one at Denise as she hastily closed her robe. “Paybacks,” Ian said succinctly. Then he walked away, whistling.

That's wonderful. I do like a man that tells you right out he’s looking out for himself. Don’t we all? I don’t trust a man that says he’s not. And the man that’s telling the truth when he says he’s not I distrust most of all, because he’s and ass and an ass that’s going contrary to the laws of nature.

But why, why all the hurt? Because, said Mr. Halloway. You need fuel, gas, someting to run a carnival on, don't you? Women live off gossip, and what's gossip but a swap of headaches, sour spit, arthritic bones, ruptured and mended flesh, indiscretions, storms of madness, calms after the storms? If some people didn't have something juicy to chew on, their choppers would prolapse, their souls with them. Multiply their pleasure at funerals, their chuckling through breakfast obituaries, add all the cat-fight marriages where folks spend careers ripping skin off each other and patching it back upside around, add quack doctors slicing persons to read their guts like tea leaves, then sewing them tight with fingerprinted thread, square the whole dynamite factory by ten quadrillion, and you got the black candlepower of this one carnival. All the meannesses we harbor, they borrow in redoubled spades. They're a billion times itchier for pain, sorrow, and sickness than the average man. We salt our lives with other people's sins. Our flesh to us tastes sweet. But the carnival doesn't care if it stinks by moonlight instead of sun, so long as it gorges on fear and pain. That's the fuel, the vapor that spins the carousel, the raw stuffs of terror, the excruciating agony of guilt, the scream from real or imagined wounds. The carnival sucks that gas, ignites it, and chugs along its way.

Tell me “The Subtle Briar” again,’ she asked. She knew I would still know it by heart. I whispered to her in the dark. ‘When you cut down the hybrid rose, its blackened stump below the graft spreads furtive fingers in the dirt. It claws at life, weaving a raft of suckering roots to pierce the earth. The first thin shoot is fierce and green, a pliant whip of furious briar splitting the soil, gulping the light. You hack it down. It skulks between the flagstones of the garden path to nurse a hungry spur in shade against the porch. With iron spade you dig and drag it from the gravel and toss it living on the fire. ‘It claws up towards the light again hidden from view, avoiding battle beyond the fence. Unnoticed, then, unloved, unfed, it clings and grows in the wild hedge. The subtle briar armors itself with desperate thorns and stubborn leaves – and struggling higher, unquenchable, it now adorns itself with blossom, till the stalk is crowned with beauty, papery white fine petals thin as chips of chalk or shaven bone, drinking the light. ‘Izabela, Aniela, Alicia, Eugenia, Stefania, Rozalia, Pelagia, Irena, Alfreda, Apolonia, Janina, Leonarda, Czeslava, Stanislava, Vladyslava, Barbara, Veronika, Vaclava, Bogumila, Anna, Genovefa, Helena, Jadviga, Joanna, Kazimiera, Ursula, Vojcziecha, Maria, Wanda, Leokadia, Krystyna, Zofia. ‘When you cut down the hybrid rose to cull and plough its tender bed, trust there is life beneath your blade: the suckering briar below the graft, the wildflower stock of strength and thorn whose subtle roots are never dead.

The men digging in on both sides of me cursed the stench and the mud. I began moving the heavy, sticky clay mud with my entrenching shovel to shape out the extent of the foxhole before digging deeper. Each shovelful had to be knocked off the spade, because it stuck like glue. I was thoroughly exhausted and thought my strength wouldn’t last from one sticky shovelful to the next. Kneeling on the mud, I had dug the hole no more than six or eight inches deep when the odor of rotting flesh got worse. There was nothing to do but continue to dig, so I closed up my mouth and inhaled with short shallow breaths. Another spadeful of soil out of the hole released a mass of wriggling maggots that came welling up as though those beneath were pushing them out. I cursed and told the NCO as he came by what a mess I was digging into. ‘You heard him, he said put the holes five yards apart.’ In disgust, I drove the spade into the soil, scooped out the insects, and threw them down the front of the ridge. The next stroke of the spade unearthed buttons and scraps of cloth from a Japanese army jacket in the mud—and another mass of maggots. I kept on doggedly. With the next thrust, metal hit the breastbone of a rotting Japanese corpse. I gazed down in horror and disbelief as the metal scraped a clean track through the mud along the dirty whitish bone and cartilage with ribs attached. The shoved skidded into the rotting abdomen with a squishing sound. The odor nearly overwhelmed me as I rocked back on my heels. I began choking and gagging as I yelled in desperation, ‘I can’t dig in here! There’s a dead Nip here!’ The NCO came over, looked down at my problem and at me, and growled, ‘You heard him; he said put the holes five yards apart.

I don’t trust white people like you do. I obviously don’t think they are all murderers, but I think they are all racist.” “All?” I say, eyebrows raised. “It sounds wild, I know, but racism is a spectrum and they all participate in it in some way. They don’t all have white hoods or call us mean things; I know that. But racism isn’t just about that—it’s not about being nice or mean. Or good versus bad. It’s bigger than that. We’re all in this bubble being affected by the past. The moment they decided they got to be white and have all the power and we got to be Black and be at the bottom, everything changed. If we can’t talk about it honestly, and I mean really talk about it, then what’s the point? I read some Malcom X last year, and I agree with him. Some might even treat you good, like an owner might treat a pet.” “That’s wild,” I say. “Yeah, it is. I think anyone can be nice, but it’s not about being nice. You can’t escape a history like that and not be affected. Us Blacks, we start hating ourselves, and them whites start thinking they’re all better than us. Even if they aren’t thinking it constantly, it’s in there somewhere.