The Twelve Tribes Of Hattie Quotes

Maybe we have only a finite amount of love to give. We're born with our portion, and if we love and are not loved enough in return, it's depleted.

I try to find the beauty in things. On dark days I sit in my armchair looking at clouds and I am awed at how rain is made.

...Hattie wanted to give her babies names that weren't already chiseled on a headstone in the family plots in Georgia, so she gave them names of promise and of hope, reaching-forward names, not looking-back ones.

I probably always will be. But I’ve been mad all my life, and I finally figured out that I couldn’t keep carrying that with me. It’s too heavy and I’m too tired. Time will take care of it, like it does everything else.

His pain was his most precious and secret possession, and Six held on to it as fiercely as a jewel robbed from a corpse.

The Lord brings us into this world naked, but I don’t suppose he means us to stay that way

Pride brought down a lot of folks. One of these days you gon' have to turn around and look at whatever it is you running from.

Half of what’s wrong with people today is that they ain’t got no place to go that makes them peaceful. I don’t reckon you got no place like that.

It seemed to him that every time he made one choice in his life, he said no to another. All of those things he could not do or be were huddled inside of him; they might spring up at any moment, and he would be hobbled with regret.

God doesn't come to sit on the porch and sip lemonade. He comes to take over.

Fine doesn't call before dawn.

Hattie had never been easy to love. She was too quiet, it was impossible to know what she was thinking. And she was angry all of the time and so disdainful when her high expectations weren't met.

I make a point of seeing the sunset. Even if I am on duty, I go on deck to watch the sky darken into twilight. It helps me remember that this strange place is still the earth, and I am still on it.

At last, her mother and sisters exited the station and came to stand next to her. “Mama,” Hattie said. “I’ll never go back. Never.

You ought to go now before she wakes up,” Hattie said. She handed her daughter to Pearl. I’m in the floor, she thought.

There is a particular kind of afternoon sun that exists only in autumn. A golden light drapes itself over the world of that hour. It falls through the afternoon sky, fine and faint as a swirl of cigarette smoke caught in the wind, nearly transparent. So sweet, that light, insisting softly, goldly against the windows.

I couldn't stand to be a fool a second time,' Hattie said. 'I couldn't stand it.

Hattie was like a lake of smooth, silvered ice, under which nothing could be seen or known.

I go above deck to watch the sky darken into twilight. It helps me remember that this strange place is still the earth, and I am still on it.

I wonder if the brass understands that people are getting killed.

Hattie’s children died in the order in which they were born: first Philadelphia, then Jubilee.

She wished the man outside really were Thomas, so she and Billups could again have the same enemy and the same fear.O

Some things you can’t apologize for, you just have to try to get around them,” Hattie replied. “For your own sake too, so you can have a little peace.

One of these days you gon’ have to turn around and look at whatever it is you running from.

I know all of her moods and the way they play across her features, but I am still awed at the configuration of lips and eyes and cheeks that make up that face that I love. Out of all of the others I could have loved. My Sissy.

The thing to do was to insult her or slap her or run her out into the night. She’d left him with all their children. She was holding another man’s baby in her arms. Anyone would agree that he ought to do something terrible to her, but she had been gone fifteen hours, and in that fifteen hours his life had crumbled like a lump of dry earth.

She didn’t know what to make of this sporadic urgency with him. It had confounded and humiliated her for the thirty years of their marriage. These endless pregnancies. And worse, her body’s insistence on a man who was the greatest mistake of her life.

It had been easy to be comfortable with each other when there was a glass wall between them.

It seems to me that everything is on its way to becoming something else, giving itself up in the service of another. In

At home they thought of white people as a vague but powerful entity--like the forces that control the weather, that capable of destruction, that hidden from view.

Bell lifted her hand to her chest. Her heart beat so quickly. She was floating out on a tide of agony, and soon she would be carried so far she'd never come back.

I try to look for the beauty in things.

Six wasn't sure religion was any more than a lot of people caught up in a collective delirium that disappeared the minute they stepped out of the church doors and onto the street.

In Georgia, there was a eucalyptus tree in the wood across from Hattie's house, but the plant had been hard to come by in the Philadelphia winter.

It was important to do what needed doing, no matter the day or the circumstance.

His soul was susceptible to god's whimsy, just as his body was susceptible to any opportunistic thing that might hurt it. If he'd known how to pray, Six would have asked God to take his gift away.

She had been with her share of schemers and men who were forever building castles in the sky. All of those dreams made out of clouds; when it rained - and it always did - they were left with nothing but the soggy shirts on their backs.

All of them -- Hattie and Willie and Evelyn and even ruined, crazy Walter -- were little lights; sparks flying upward in dark places, trying to stay alight though they were compelled toward ash. They were nearly extinguished one moment, then orange and luminous the next.

I take in great lungfuls of air. Atom by atom, the oxygen enters my blood and pumps in waves through my veins; it is tidal, this pumping blood. My heart beats mightily. If I ran any faster, gravity would loose its claims on my ankles, and my feet would pedal into the air.

The butterflies were still alive in the Mason jar. August turned to her and said, “We gon’ make it through, Hattie.” She snatched the jar from the table and hurled it at the wall behind August. The two of them watched the butterflies, stunned and struggling in the broken glass.O

Eudine did not reply. She was indecipherable, so ageless and immaculate. Her eyes were the same caramel shade as her skin. Her face was a placid lake, such depths. A woman with a face like that could be a confessor, could be told anything, no matter how awful, and remain steady as granite.

How many children could a woman really love?

Hattie had been stern and angry all of Bell’s life, and it occurred to her that her mother must have been very unhappy most of the time.

Bell had been disdainful of them; she’d thought them small and ordinary. She’d taken such pleasure in saying no to their proposals and breaking their hearts. Women who married men like that did nothing but shop for groceries and nearly die of boredom. But here I am dying anyway.

Sala, waking up to the sun and finding her mother groomed, could try to forget the night before. There were many things Sala tried to forget; sometimes she succeeded, for an hour or a day. More often, Cassie wearied and bewildered her. It had grown impossible to know what was real or true, and Sala was afraid all of the time. She learned to put aside things that were too confusing or too painful. And so she set aside the previous evening and hopped out of bed and asked her mother if she could wear her purple corduroy pants to school that day.

But she was gone, and Hattie wanted to give her babies names that weren’t already chiseled on a headstone in the family plots in Georgia, so she gave them names of promise and of hope, reaching forward names, not looking back ones. The

My God, but you are hard to love,” Hattie

Somebody always wants something from me,” she said in a near whisper. “They’re eating me alive.

I think she’s really finished with me this time. I’ll never be finished with her.

No one could tell her why things had turned out as they had, not August or the pastor or God himself.

Somebody always wants something from me," she said in a near whisper. "They're eating me alive.

Now, we struggle, brothers and sisters, and we strive. We have our trials and our tribulations but we are blessed. We go to bed, praise Jesus, and we rise again in the morning. And if that's not a blessing, I don't know what is.

There were too many disappointments to name and too much heartbreak. They were beyond punishment or forgiveness, beyond what they had inflicted on each other, beyond love.

Mother was a beautiful young woman; the house was too plain, too small to contain her. I watched her; for the first time I understood that she had an inner life that didn't have anything to do with me or my brothers and sisters.

Down the hall the children slept three to a bedroom; Hattie could almost hear them growing, their wrists lengthening and poking out beyond the cuffs of their sleeves, their feet outgrowing their shoes, their shoulders widening and pulling the fabric of their coats taut.

She had her nose so high in the air she could smell the birds farting.

In one of the novel’s most dramatic and revealing chapters, Hattie leaves August with the older children and escapes with baby Ruthie (then called Margaret) and her lover, Lawrence. How did this make you feel? Were you hoping she would stay with Lawrence or go back to August and the children?

She squatted there so long her thighs ached and a wide puddle formed beneath her. The cool air felt nice on her backside, but she couldn’t help looking around to see if anyone was there.

now you’re mad ’cause I won’t stay in it.

They didn’t understand that all the love she had was taken up with feeding them and clothing them and preparing them to meet the world. The world would not love them; the world would not be kind.

had done the best she could. She was done with regret and recrimination, there was no sense in it for an old woman.

Half of what’s wrong with people today is that they ain’t got no place to go that makes them peaceful.

Hattie clambered from the train, her skirt still hemmed with Georgia mud, the dream of Philadelphia round as a marble in her mouth and the fear of it a needle in her chest.

God had indeed set it twirling and twisting every which way when he put black people to owning their own kind.

Six understood in that instant that he had something the ministers wanted and it had given him power among them. He had never been powerful among men.

All of them...were little lights; sparks flying upward in dark places, trying to stay alight though they were compelled toward ash. They were nearly extinguished one moment, then orange and luminous the next.