Blackness Quotes

If you remove Al Sharpton's blackness, he disappears. He's transparent. There's nothing there because he bases his whole life on his blackness. Me, I'm a black man; but my blackness has submission to my Christianity. ~ Ken Hutcherson

I closed my eyelids, and imagination, taking up the thread of thought, shot its swift shuttle back across the ages, weaving a picture on their blackness so real and vivid in its details that I could almost for a moment think that I had triumphed o'er the Past, and that my spirit's eyes had pierced the mystery of Time. ~ H. Rider Haggard

One last mystery: on one of the little ponds, this morning, I saw wind riffling the first of the waterlily leaves. They haven't all emerged yet, but new circles tattoo the water, here and there, a coppery red. When the wind lifted their edges, each would reveal a little shadowy spot, a dot of black which seemed to flash on the water, and so across the whole surface of the pond there was what could only be described as the inverse of sparkling; a scintillant blackness. Shining blackly, black but rippling, lyrical: the sheen and radiance of death-in-life.
Is that my work, to point to the world and say, See how darkly it sparkles? ~ Mark Doty

The chasm was merely one of the orifices of that pit of blackness that lies beneath us.. ~ Nathanial Hawthorne

Or ... maybe I'm not going crazy. "Maybe I'm some sort of android-cyborg-clone-thing, and I'm just breaking down.
I'm not sure which way is worse.
Dad laughs. "You're not in your right mind, dear," he says. "No, no, no, you're not."
And then
- Silence.
Dad fades away. The reverie chair disappears.
There's just blackness. I remember then that I am in the reverie of something dead. Whatever that thing was, it was dead.
And, just as I'm starting to wonder if, perhaps, I have died, too, I see a light, far away in the corner of the dreamscape. The light isn't soft; it's not glowing. It crackles like silent lightning, burning with electricity, sparks flying out and fizzling in the dark.
I don't know why - it makes no sense, the way dreams often don't - but I want to touch the light.
So I do. ~ Beth Revis

And then we jerked to a stop. Jared was blocking the exit. "Have you lost your mind, Ian?" he asked, shocked and outraged. "What are you doing to her?"
"Did you know about this?" Ian shouted back, shoving me toward Jared and shaking me at him.
"You're going to hurt her!"
"Do you know what she's planning?" Ian roared.
Jared stared at Ian, his face suddenly closed off. He didn't answer. That was answer enough for Ian.
Ian's fist struck Jared so fast that I missed the blow - I just felt the lurch in his body and saw Jared reel back into the dark hall.
"Ian, stop," I begged.
"You stop," he growled back at me.
He yanked me through the arch into the tunnel, then pulled me north. I had to almost run to keep up with his longer stride.
"O´Shea!" Jared shouted after us.
"I'm going to hurt her?" Ian roared back over his shoulder, not breaking pace. "I am? You hypocritical swine!"
There was nothing but silence and blackness behind us now. I stumbled in the dark, trying to keep up.
He jerked me along faster, and my breath caught in a moan, almost like a cry of pain.
The sound made Ian stumble to a stop. His breathing was hoarse in the darkness.
"Ian, Ian, I..." I chocked, unable to finish. I didn't know what to say, picturing his furious face.
His arms caught me abruptly, yanking my feet out from under me and then catching my shoulders before I could fall. He started running forward again, carrying me now. His hand ~ Stephenie Meyer

Once, when I was a child, I dreamed that Grimbeard the Ghastly, on the deck of his ship The Endless Journey, threw the sword Endeavor up into the air. Up and up it spun, through the inky blackness, across the cavernous span of a hundred years, until, entirely of its own accord, my own left hand sprang out of space and stars and never-ending time and caught it. Now that I am so very old, I am dreaming once again. And in my dream, I am the one throwing the sword. It is spinning now, in the black starlit waters of my dream, right above your head, dear reader. A sword that may look second-best, and secondhand, but but carries the memories of a thousand lost fights, a history lesson in itself. Reach out, and catch it by the hilt. Swear by its name, Endeavor, to do your utmost to make the world a better place than when you arrived in it. For look! There will be dragons all around you, as camouflaged as a Stealth Dragon. ~ Cressida Cowell

It's bad enough ... when a country gets colonized, but when the people do as well! That's the end, really, that's the end. ~ Tsitsi Dangarembga

We don't talk about white drug dealers this way. We don't even talk about white murderers this way. Somehow, we manage to think of them as people first, who just happened to do something bad. But the same respect is rarely afforded to Black folks. We must always earn the right to live. Perfection is demanded of Blackness before mercy or grace or justice can even be considered. ~ Austin Channing Brown

I need to remember what they look like. I try to hold them still behind my eyes, their faces, like pictures in an album. But they won't stay still for me, they move, there's a smile and it's gone, their features curl and bend as if the paper's burning, blackness eats them. A glimpse, a pale shimmer on the air; a glow, aurora, dance of electrons, then a face again, faces. But they fade, though I stretch out my arms towards them, they slip away from me, ghosts at daybreak. Back to wherever they are. Stay with me, I want to say. But they won't. ~ Margaret Atwood

There's no love in you because there's no sex in you. Sex is light and fertility and life and communication! You only have this ... pornography and submission and blackness and death! You're like a faggot! ~ Mary Gaitskill

SAY IT IS WELL EVEN WHEN U ARE INSIDE D WELL.WE CAN STILL SEE GOD THRU D BLACKNESS OF DARKNESS.TRUST GOD. ~ Ikechukwu Joseph

May the day of my birth perish. May it turn to darkness. May God above not care about it. May no light shine on it. May gloom and utter darkness claim it once more. May a cloud settle over it. May blackness overwhelm it. May thick darkness seize it. May it not be included among the days of the year nor be entered in any of the months. May that night be barren. May no shout of joy be heard in it. May those who curse days curse that day. May its morning stars become dark. May it wait for daylight in vain and not see the first rays of dawn, for it did not shut the doors of the womb on me to hide trouble from my eyes.
Why did I not perish at birth, and die as I came from the womb? Why were there knees to receive me and breasts that I might be nursed? For now I would be lying down in peace; I would be asleep and at rest.
Why is light given to those in misery, and life to the bitter of soul,
to those who long for death that does not come, who search for it more than for hidden treasure, who are filled with gladness and rejoice when they reach the grave?
For sighing has become my daily food; my groans pour out like water.What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me.I have no peace, no quietness; I have no rest, but only turmoil. ~ Anonymous

She would like to say, Listen, Dr. Sue, deep down there is a thing inside me, and sometimes it swells up like the head of a squid and shoots blackness through me. I haven't wanted to be this way, but so help me, I have loved my son. ~ Elizabeth Strout

Her body poised with the tension of a wild animal, ready to pounce - or to flee. So beautiful, he thought. As he voiced the words, she faded away, and his world returned to blackness. ~ India Drummond

I am an American, proud to be an American, proud to be a black American. I'm not African-American. I've never been to Africa. I'm an American that is black and my　– and I'm proud to be a black that submits to my Christianity. I am proud to be just a man. I mean a man's man, not a metro sexual, not one that gets his nails done. I mean a man that used to get out there and knock heads and get his fingernails dirty. I'm proud of being a man, but my manhood submits to my Christianity, but I don't see that in Al Sharpton. Any time anything happens that attacks his blackness, he fears it and　– because he has nothing else to stand on. Thus, when the real civil rights movement of everyone steps up, when we're saying the Tea Party, don't take being discriminated against. If a black person was kicked out of a hotel for being black down in Florida, it would be an uproar, but since the Tea Party was kicked out because of their political views, that's going against America. That's why we're here going against the Constitution, with certain unalienable rights. That is the true fight we must start and we must fight today like never before. ~ Ken Hutcherson

They went on in the perfect blackness, sightless as the blind. ~ Cormac McCarthy

Shadows ran all around her and someone was talking to her but it was all just white noise. Goodbye solo she would never perform. Goodbye perfect night that never got the chance to end in Garrett's arms. Garrett, oh god. Goodbye love of her life, she had loved him and with the thought of never seeing him again her body gave up a single tear. It escaped her eye and coursed through the blood and dirt on her cheek making a single clean streak as the blackness took over. ~ Renee Jean

When the inky blackness above shades to a deep blue and the stars lose their hard edge and begin to seem unreal, she rises, wrapping the thin sheet about herself, and steps outside into the morning chill. ~ Leonard Pitts Jr.

Jonathan's arm jerked to the side in clumsy reaction, tipping over the bottle of ink that sat on the desk beside his papers. He watched the dark liquid obliterate in a moment what had cost him an afternoon of painful effort to complete. It was a fitting metaphor for his life, he thought, like the despair that spread inexorably through his being, a creeping blackness that threatened to blot out what small hope or purpose was yet left to him. ~ Sondra Allan Carr

It was like this blackness that crept into the corners of my life until everything was grey and dirty. My insides felt burnt out, like if you cut me open, all you would find would be smoke. No heart. No bones. There was nothing left, just the anger. It followed me everywhere. It sat on my bed and watched me sleep and when I had to eat, it looked at me across the table. ~ Tanya Byrne

Here was the heart of dread. It was not fearsome. It was fetid, noxious, hopeless. A deep and exhausting misery, a crevasse so bottomless that, in the blackness, all one could make out were the contours of despair. ~ Laura Tillman

In their castle beyond night
Gather the Gods in Darkness,
With darkness to pattern man's fate.

The colors of darkness are no monotonous hue -
For the blackness of Evil knows various shades,
Full many as Evil has names.

Vengeance and Madness, inseparable twins,
Born together and worshipped as one;
Nor can the Gods tell one from his brother.

In their castle beyond night
Gather the Gods in Darkness
And darkness weaves with many shades. ~ Karl Edward Wagner

Now they were upon him, their tiny legs crawling over his bare skin; he tried to get up, but he was drowning in spiders. Fat Charlie wanted to scream, but his mouth was filled with spiders. They covered his eyes, and his world went dark ... . Fat Charlie opened his eyes and saw nothing but blackness, and he screamed and he screamed and he screamed. ~ Neil Gaiman

And watching this silently, as was my way, I marveled at the bonds between us-the way we shortened our words, or spoke, sometimes, with no words at all...an entire world of our own, hidden away from them, and to be part of that world, I felt even then, was to be in on a secret, a secret that was in you. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

It's a fact: black people in this country die more easily, at all ages, across genders. Look at how young black men die, and how middle-aged black men drop dead, and how black women are ravaged by HIV/AIDS. The numbers graft to poverty but they also graph to stresses known and invisible. How did we come here, after all? Not with upturned chins and bright eyes but rather in chains, across a chasm. But what did we do? We built a nation, and we built its art. ~ Elizabeth Alexander

Critics assert that Black Lives Matter is an anti-White terrorist group; the counterargument, "All Lives Matter," is little more than a racist dog whistle that attempts to both delegitimize centuries of claims of global anti-Black oppression and position those who exhibit tremendous pride in their Blackness as enemies of the state. Well, we are enemies of any racist, sexist, classist, xenophobic state that sanctions brutality and murder against marginalized people who deserve to live as free people. ~ Feminista Jones

All of the sadness of the city came suddenly with the first cold rains of winter, and there were no more tops to the high white houses as you walked but only the wet blackness of the street and the closed doors of the small shops, the herb sellers, the stationery and the newspaper shops, the midwife - second class - and the hotel where Verlaine had died where you had a room on the top floor where you worked. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

The only pawn shop in the town of Night Vale is run by the very young Jackie Fierro. It has no name, but if you need it, you will know where it is. This knowledge will come suddenly, often while you are in the shower. You will collapse, surrounded by a bright glowing blackness, and you will find yourself on your hands and knees, the warm water running over you, and you will know where the pawn shop is. You will smell must, and soap, and feel a stab of panic about how alone you are.

It will be like most showers you've taken. ~ Joseph Fink

And, as the tiny lights drift into the blackness, the people pray that others around the world will remember Hiroshima and work for world peace.

The atom bomb is too terrible a weapon.

It must not drop again. ~ Laurence Yep

I frowned, staring into the eerie blackness along Route 33 truckers always complained about. It is odd how we rarely encounter true darkness. Somewhere, there is always light; a house, a town, headlights. Not here. Just total and complete darkness. I had been on the night run for months, long enough to get accustomed to total darkness if not entirely comfortable with it. What concerned me was the silence. I'd often had to pull over and take a pee along that godforsaken beltway. There were crickets rubbing their legs together in the cotton and wheat, grasshoppers jumping through the corn stalks, and June bugs flittering above the fields. Occasionally while relieving myself I'd even hear a lone armadillo burrowing. Tonight, however, I heard nothing. Less than nothing. Always there existed a strangeness here the truckers talked about, but tonight something had inexplicably hushed the sounds of night and made it stranger. The silence itself was dead; the kind of silence you get high up in the mountains when it snows, hushing the entire world beneath a white blanket. The blanket along Damnation Road was black, and it felt…unnatural." - NIGHT RUN - Bobby Underwood ~ Bobby Underwood

Annie didn't reply, her own words about death reminding her of the terror that had consumed her when she dropped beneath the waves. In that blackness, she hadn't thought about those she loved, or of all that she'd done. On the contrary, she'd been reminded of what she hadn't done. And the fear of never doing such things had filled her with a longing she hadn't known. ~ John Shors

He was dead; I needed to let his memory go, too. That was the first step for me, before discrimination.
Yet my love was the ghost of a young girl's dream. It walked alone in the abyss, stubbornly, where only illusions prospered on tears and regrets. My love had a life of its own; it was perverted but nevertheless still vital. For that reason, I wanted to return to deep space. Honestly, I would have preferred it if we had traveled forever and never stopped at another star system. To fall into endless blackness, that was my new fantasy.
The young girl with the ancient dream wept. I could hear her; I even saw her tears on the glass of the observation deck. It made me feel old. I didn't want to know her name. I couldn't forget Tem but I needed to forget her. ~ Christopher Pike

Jealousy is perhaps the most involuntary of all strong emotions. It steals consciousness, it lies deeper than thought. It is always there, like a blackness in the eye, it discolours the world. ~ Iris Murdoch

But it was difficult to remain faithful when all about you was blackness and exertion. ~ David Kirk

That is what they say I said when they found me in the blackness after three hours; found me crouching in the blackness over the plump, half-eaten body of Capt. Norrys, with my own cat leaping and tearing at my throat ... When I speak of poor Norrys they accuse me of a hideous thing, but they must know that I did not do it. They must know it was the rats; the slithering, scurrying rats whose scampering will never let me sleep; the daemon rats that race behind the padding in this room and beckon me down to greater horrors than I have ever known; the rats they can never hear; the rats, the rats in the walls. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

I am sliding, down,down. Toward blackness, I must not sleep. I must not sleep.I.Must.Not.Sleep. ~ S.J. Watson

The tunneling entrance curves before it opens into this space and there is absolute, waiting, coiled, and sentient blackness. ~ Sofia Samatar

The only way I can describe the visions I witnessed with even faint approximation is in terms of other scenes which might arouse similar impressions of tortuous chaos: perhaps a festival of colors twisting in blackness, a tentacled abyss that alternately seems to glisten moistly as with some horrendous dew, then suddenly dulls into an arid glow, like bone-colored stars shining over an extra-terrestrial desert. ~ Thomas Ligotti

I look down past the stars to a terrifying darkness. I seem to recognize the place, but it's impossible. "Accident," I whisper. I will fall. I seem to desire the fall, and though I fight it with all my will I know in advance I can't win. Standing baffled, quaking with fear, three feet from the edge of a nightmare cliff, I find myself, incredibly, moving towards it. I look down, down, into bottomless blackness, feeling the dark power moving in me like an ocean current, some monster inside me, deep sea wonder, dread night monarch astir in his cave, moving me slowly to my voluntary tumble into death. ~ John Gardner

We are real black characters with real character, not the stars of American racist spectacle. Blackness is not probable cause. ~ Kiese Laymon

Mom talked a good game about the power of blackness, but she knew that the white world held even more power. You just needed to find a way to break in. ~ Ilyasah Shabazz

That's sweet and all, but we can't hold this bastard down much longer," Wyot, one of the dragons on top of Uther, grumbled.
Brand lifted his head and grinned, "Shall we kill a king, my queen?"
She laughed, pure joy erupting from the blackness that had consumed her. "By all means. ~ Abigail Owen

Yes, many years of oppression may have complicated things and it seems impossible for blacks to create their own means of production. But, I truly believe that we must start somewhere. We must reimagine a world where we are proudly black and support all things black in order to reinvent the economic wheel. We talk. We produce theories. We prove ourselves and and and... But we must also put our money where our mouths and theories are. This is why we fight each and every single day. ~ Malebo Sephodi

In the discussion at Phi Beta Sigma, a social fraternity I joined for a while, I expressed my anger about society and white racism. The other told me that I sounded like a guy named Donald Warden who was preaching Blackness at the Berkley campus of the University of California. He was the head of an organization called the Afro-American Association.

I went to Berkley to find Warden and hear what he was saying. The first member I met, though, was Maurice Dawson, one of Warden's tight partners. He turned me off with his arrogance. I had come searching for something, and he scorned me because I did not already know what I was seeking. I could not understand what he was saying about "Afro-Americans." The term was new to me. Dawson really put me down. "You know what an Afro-Cucan is?" "Yes" "You know what an Afro-Brazilian is?" "Yes" "Then why don't you know what an Afro-American is?" It may have been apparent to him, but not to me. But I was stilled interested.

Maurice taught me a lesson that I try to apply to the Black Panther Party today. I dissuade Party members from putting down people who do not understand. Even people who are unenlightened and seemingly bourgeois should be answered in a polite way. Things should be explained to them as fully as possible. I was turned off by a person who did not want to talk to me because I was not important enough. Maurice just wanted to preach to the converted, who already agreed with him. I try to be cordial, because ~ Huey P. Newton

It was a stern night landscape. The sound of the freezing of snow over the land seemed to roar deep into the earth. There was no moon. The stars, almost too many of them to be true, came forward so brightly that it was as if they were falling with the swiftness of the void. As the stars came nearer, the sky retreated deeper and deeper into the night clolour. The layers of the Border Range, indistinguishable one from another, cast their heaviness at the skirt of the starry sky in a blackness grave and somber enough to communicate their mass. The whole of the night scene came together in a clear, tranquil harmony. ~ Yasunari Kawabata

They came there regularly every evening drawn by some need. It was as if the water floated off and set sailing thoughts which had grown stagnant on dry land, and gave to their bodies even some sort of physical relief. First, the pulse of colour flooded the bay with blue, and the heart expanded with it and the body swam, only the next instant to be checked and chilled by the prickly blackness on the ruffled waves. Then, up behind the great black rock, almost every evening spurted irregularly, so that one had to watch for it and it was a delight when it came, a fountain of white water; and then while one waited for that, one watched, on the pale semicircular beach, wave after wave shedding again and again smoothly, a film of mother-of-pearl. ~ Virginia Woolf

The light flickers on all of us and makes us look softer and more beautiful than we really are. But sometimes it makes us darker and scarier too, when the faces go into shadow and you can't see the eyes, only the eye sockets. Deep pools of blackness welling out of our heads. My ~ Margaret Atwood

Meanwhile, in Genoa, the noons were getting hotter, the converging outer roads getting deeper with white dust, the oleanders in the tubs along the wayside gardens looking more and more like fatigued holiday-makers, and the sweet evening changing her office - scattering abroad those whom the mid-day had sent under shelter, and sowing all paths with happy social sounds, little tinklings of mule-bells and whirrings of thrumbed strings, light footsteps and voices, if not leisurely, then with the hurry of pleasure in them; while the encircling heights, crowned with forts, skirted with fine dwellings and gardens, seemed also to come forth and gaze in fulness of beauty after their long siesta, till all strong colour melted in the stream of moonlight which made the streets a new spectacle with shadows, both still and moving, on cathedral steps and against the facades of massive palaces; and then slowly with the descending moon all sank in deep night and silence, and nothing shone but the port lights of the great Lanterna in the blackness below, and the glimmering stars in the blackness above. ~ George Eliot

There are stars, stars, scattered stars, blackness all between. They ripple and fold and bend, and they rush toward him, rush by him. Their colors are blazing and pure as angels' eyes. ~ Roger Zelazny

I was sucked in by the blackness of her eyes. I was pulled under as she sank mercifully deep. I imagined her whole body playing inside mine, writhing up and down as I was filled and emptied. My deepest fire ignited then raged and finally exploded. My eyes were open when it happened. Nikki thundered down on me and rocked me in her arms until I stopped shaking. There was nothing more to save and nothing more to give. That sacred part of my soul was now and forever hers. ~ Giselle Fox

When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud, I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form. ~ Bob Dylan

I sold my elegant blackness to all those childhood ghosts and now they pay me for it. ~ Toni Morrison

It made her think of Laika, the dog. The man-made satellite streaking soundlessly across the blackness of outer space. The dark, lustrous eyes of the dog gazing out of the tiny window. In the infinite loneliness of space, what could Laika possibly be looking at? ~ Haruki Murakami

The voice was calm and infinitely tender. He didn't understand the words, because unconsciousness still wrapped his mind in layers of blackness, but he heard the voice, felt it, like something warm touching his skin. It made him feel less alone, that tiny, dim contact. Something hard and vital in him focused on the contact, yearning toward it, forcing him upward out of the blackness, even though he sensed the fanged monsters that waited for him, waiting to tear at his flesh with hot knives and brutal teeth. He would have to endure that before he could reach the voice, and he was very weak. He might not make it. Yet the voice reached out to him, pulling at him like a magnet, lifting him out of the deep senselessness that had held him. ~ Linda Howard

Very, very slowly, the dwarf remnants of what was once our mighty sun will cool and dim, until it embarks on its final metamorphosis, gradually solidifying into a crystal of extraordinary rigidity. Eventually it will fade out completely, merging quietly into the blackness of space. ~ Paul Davies

In my dream it was very dark, and what dim light there was seemed to be radiating from Edward's skin. I couldn't see his face, just his back as he walked away from me, leaving me in the blackness. No matter how fast I ran, I couldn't catch up to him; no matter how loud I called, he never turned. Troubled, I woke in the middle of the night and couldn't sleep again for what seemed like a very long time. After that, he was in my dreams nearly every night, but always on the periphery, never within reach. ~ Stephenie Meyer

Lincoln was raised in the thick of Old School Calvinism. In Kentucky and Indiana, his parents belonged to a fire-breathing sect called Separate Baptism, in which congregants heard - in the tradition of Jonathan Edward's famous sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" - that they were bound for eternal hellfire, and nothing they could do or say or think would change their fate. Preachers did allow that a chosen few were ordained for grace and would be saved, but these fortunate ones had been selected by God before time began. As one Baptist preacher in Lincoln's Kentucky explained it, "Long before the morning stars sang together . . . the Almighty looked down upon the ages yet unborn, as it were, in review before him, and selected one here and another there to enjoy eternal life and left the rest to the blackness of darkness forever." Such Baptist ministers were so intense that it has been said that they "out-Calvined Calvin. ~ Joshua Wolf Shenk

What good's a black face if it means I'm just someone else's property? Why give me these arms and legs just to carry someone else's load, not my own? ~ Stacey Lee

There's more to blackness than bludgeoning people with memories of past atrocities and injustices or the discussion of how difficult it is to be black and deal with whites. ~ Toure

And do not try to be so brave. I am your lifemate.You cannot hide from me something as powerful as fear."
"Trepidation," she corrected, nibbling at the pad of his thumb.
"Is there a difference?" His pale eyes had warmed to molten mercury. Just that fast, her body ent liquid in answer.
"You know very well there is." She laughed again, and the sound traveled down from his heart to pool in his groin, a heavy,familiar ache. "Slight, perhaps, but very important."
"I will try to make you happy, Savannah," he promised gravely.
Her fingers went up to brush at the thick mane of hair falling around his face. "You are my lifemate, Gregori. I have no doubt you will make me happy."
He had to look away,out the window into the night. She was so good, with so much beauty in her, while he was so dark, his goodness drained into the ground with the blood of all the lives he had taken while he waited for her. But now,faced with the reality of her, Gregori could not bear her to witness the blackness within him, the hideous stain across his soul.
For beyond his killing and law-breaking, he had committed the gravest crime of all. And he deserved the ultimate penalty, the forfeit of his life. He had deliberately tempered with nature.He knew he was powerful enough, knew his knowledge exeeded the boundaries of Carpathian law. He had taken Savannah's free will, manipulated the chemistry between them so that she would believe he was her true lifemate. And so she was wi ~ Christine Feehan

last the play was ended. All had grown dark. The tears streamed down his face. Looking up into the sky there was nothing but blackness there too. Ruin and death, he thought, cover all. The life of man ends in the grave. Worms devour us. ~ Virginia Woolf

I want the dead to be dead
forever.
I don't want to be one of them,
Except of course you can't be one of them.
You can't be one of the dead
because that which, has no existence can have no community.
No community!
My heart warms just thinking about it
blackness, aloneness,silence, peace,
and all of it only a heartbeat away.
[ The Sunset Limited - 2011 ] ~ Cormac McCarthy

She was enchanting. He loved the notes she wrote in her pretty handwriting, the way she smelled, like oranges and dough, the savage blackness of her hair. ~ Sarah Addison Allen

There's something covering my face, I can't breathe, I'm suffocating. When I surface into wakefulness, I'm gasping for air and my chest hurts. I sit up, eyes wide, and see something moving in the corner of the room, a dense centre of blackness that keeps growing, and I almost cry out - and then I'm properly awake and there's nothing there, but I am sitting up in bed and my cheeks are wet with tears. ~ Paula Hawkins

There's much more to black history than pain and hard times, and romance authors, more than anyone else, know it. A writer friend told me that's what he thinks some people outside of the culture don't get about blackness: the sheer joy of it, especially given so many are only fixated on the struggle. Black romance thrives on complexity and nuance, on black solidarity and achievement, on the triumph of everyday life lived well, in spite of the odds.
-Black Romance Novels Matter Too. Shondaland 2/22/20 ~ Carole V. Bell

Deep blackness waits outside;
a veiled inferno it attempts to hide.
We see no more than dark clouds growing,
but set inside, a fire is glowing. ~ Craig Froman

We ignore the blackness of outer space and pay attention to the stars, especially if they seem to order themselves into constellations. "Common as the air" meant something worthless, but Hackworth knew that every breath of air that Fiona drew, lying in her little bed at night, just a silver flow in the moonlight, was used by her body to make skin and hair and bones. The air became Fiona, and deserving - no, demanding - of love. Ordering matter was the sole endeavor of Life, whether it was a jumble of self-replicating molecules in the primordial ocean, or a steam-powered English mill turning weeds into clothing, or Fiona lying in her bed turning air into Fiona. ~ Neal Stephenson

It doesn't surprise me that aspect of the black nationalist movement, the cultural side, has triumphed because that is the aspect of the movement that was most commodifiable and when we look at the commodification of blackness we're looking at a phenomenon that's very profitable and it's connection with the rise of a black middle class I think is very obvious. ~ Angela Davis

Runs falls rises stumbles on from darkness into darkness
and the darkness thicketed with shapes of terror
and the hunters pursuing and the hounds pursuing
and the night cold and the night long and the river
to cross and the jack-muh-lanterns beckoning beckoning
and blackness ahead ~ Robert Hayden

I think about my choice. Either outcome is bleak. If I stay and live through high school, go to college, get a job, what will ever change? This blackness inside will never go away. I don't make friends; I'll always be alone. If I go, at least there's hope of peace. Chance of a new and better life on the other side. ~ Julie Anne Peters

Who on Earth could read a Vonnegut book and think that he was a grandfatherly bundle of warm fuzzy happiness? I mean, I read Vonnegut first as a ten year old, and it was shocking because he could joke in the face of such blackness and bleakness, and I'd never seen an author do that before. Everything was pointless, except, possibly, a few moments of love snatched from the darkness, a few moments in which we connect, or fail to. ~ Neil Gaiman

Oh, to realize that souls, precious, never dying souls, are perishing all around us, going out into the blackness of darkness and despair, eternally lost, and yet to feel no anguish, shed no tears, know no travail! How little we know of the compassion of Jesus! ~ Oswald J. Smith

The day you were born was the happiest day of my life, but I was so nervous that I don't know if happiness is really the best word to describe what I felt. I think it is my obligation to tell you, in spite of the absolute love I have always felt for you, in spite of how much you have brightened my life, and I assume your mother's as well - I haven't seen her in around ten years now, but I'm sure that for her as well you have been a constant source of happiness - in spite of all that, I have to tell you that during the eighteen years you've now been alive, I've never stopped wondering what my life would have been like if you had never been born.

It's an overwhelming thought, an exit that leads to the darkest of nights, to the most complete blackness, but also to shadow and sometimes, slowly, toward something like a clearing in the woods. These fantasies are normal, but it's not so common for parents to confess them. For example, over the years I have thought thousands of times that if you hadn't been born I would have needed less money, or could have disappeared for weeks on end without worrying about anyone. I could have prolonged my youth for several more years. I could have even killed myself. I mean, the first consequence of your birth was that from then on, I could never kill myself. ~ Alejandro Zambra

Missouri would have convinced you that we did not exist if it were not for social media. The intensity with which they responded to protestors very early - we were able to document that and share it quickly with people in a way that we never could have without social media. We were able to tell our own stories. The history of blackness is also a history of erasure. Everybody has told the story of black people in struggle except black people. The black people in the struggle haven't had the means to tell the story historically. There were a million slaves but you see very few slave narratives. And that is intentional. So what was powerful in the context of Ferguson is that there were many people able to tell their story as the story unfolded. ~ Anonymous

When you step from the wings onto the stage you go from total blackness to a blinding hot glare. After a moment you adjust, but there is that moment. like being inside lightning. ~ Meg Howrey

Of course he could see only blackness, such was the treachery of fire, which iluminated small circles by darkening the entire world. ~ R. Scott Bakker

When assaulted by sexual knowledge for the first time, a girl plunges into a period of blackness, which is required in order to let her emotions catch up with her body.
Sleeping Beauty sleeps. Cinderella waits, and while she waits she works her way through the darkness of depression. Snow White both works and sleeps before she is ready to open her eyes and find a Prince leaning over her. ~ Joan Gould

She opened her eyes once again and let them drift across the scene laid out before her like a page from a storybook. Inky blackness hung above them as though painted in impasto in an opaque Prussian Blue. The impression it gave was of a sky hand-crafted out of felt with a pearl of a moon and a generous dusting of diamonds sprinkled on for the stars. A night dreams were made of. ~ Ella J. Fraser

The breezes of the West African night were intimate and shy, licking the hair, sweeping through cotton dresses with unseemly intimacy, then disappearing into the utter blackness. ~ Maya Angelou

Oscar's breath warmed the back of her head, his lips brushing against her hair, loosened from a braid. He drew a lock away from her neck and kissed the skin just beneath her earlobe, against the throb of her quickening pulse. Like the blackness outside the dome of lamplight, there seemed to be nothing more in the world than his lips, his touch, and the flood of heat consuming her.
With a gentle nudge, Oscar turned her toward him. He looked at her the way he had in the Grampains meadow-as if she was the most fascinating woman he'd ever seen. Under his gaze she felt fascinating, too. Capivating…wanted. He traced her jaw with his lips, kissing the angle of her neck ever so tenderly, as though he weren't certain she wanted him, too. Camille closed the inch of space left between them, her body pressing against his. The muscles in his chest and arms tightened. He was wanted, and she needed to show him how much. No one was there to watch, no one to judge, or tell her the lips caressing her were unworthy of tasting her skin.
With those very thoughts, Oscar's grip loosened. His lips retreated.
"This isn't right," he whispered, catching his breath.
Camille stared at him, her hurt and disappointment plain on her face.
"You're engaged, Camille." He looked around the room. His eyes rested on the bed. "I shouldn't be here."
All of a sudden, Camille completely and fully detested Randall. Good, sweet, well-meaning Randall infuriated her with his mere existence, ~ Angie Frazier

Our route had now obviously been completely blotted out and here I reckoned less of our chances of survival. We're like a voyage ship veered off course by a ruthless storm now left with no radar or compass. Ours is a sorry tale of an unpredictable adventure. One moment it seem like we're going home to mama's warm embrace and tears of joy, the next moment we feel helplessly immersed in the blackness of hopelessness. - Dami K. ~ Ray Anyasi

I've known damnable beauty - the turgid pull of swirling blackness - but in the end, it's futile - purity alone redeems ... ~ John Geddes

He realized that all men were like this; that each person was to himself one alone. One oneness, a unit in a society, but always afraid. Like here, standing. If he should scream, if he should holler for help, would it matter?
Blackness could come swiftly, swallowing; in one titanically freezing moment all would be concluded. Long before dawn, long before police with flashlights might probe the dark, disturbed pathway, long before men with trembling brains could rustle down the pebbles
to his help. Even if they were within five hundred yards of him now, and help certainly was, in three seconds a dark tide could rise to take all ten years from him and - The essential impact of life's loneliness crushed his beginning-to-tremble body. Mother was alone, too. She could not look to the sanctity of marriage, the protection of her family's love, she could not look to the United States Constitution or the City Police, she could not look anywhere, in this very instant, save into her heart, and there she would find nothing but uncontrollable repugnance and a will to fear. In this instant it was an individual problem seeking an individual solution. He must accept being alone and work on from there. ~ Ray Bradbury

When you get just a complete sense of blackness or void ahead of you, that somehow the future looks an impossible place to be, and the direction you are going seems to have no purpose, there is this word despair which is a very awful thing to feel. ~ Stephen Fry

She'd hoped to close her eyes and dream of sparkly winged horses flying through a bright blue sky. Instead, black-cloaked figures haunted her mind, snatching her from the shadows
and dragging her away in a drugged haze. Sharp bonds sliced her wrists and ankles as someone shouted questions she didn't know the answers to. Then fiery hands seared her skin and ghostly whispers swirled through the blackness.

They would find her.

She would never escape them again
. ~ Shannon Messenger

It's better to have your blackness taken away than to stand there and lie about who you actually are. That's the trap. ~ Alice Walker

Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression. ~ Yann Martel

Every light has a point where it is brightest and a point toward which it wanders to lose itself completely. It must be intercepted to fulfill its mission; it cannot function in a void. Light can go straight, penetrate and turn back, be reflected and deflected, gathered and spread, bent as by a soap bubble, made to sparkle and be blocked. Where it is no more is blackness, and where it begins is the core of its brightness. The journey of rays from that central core to the outposts of blackness is the adventure and drama of light. ~ Josef Von Sternberg

Maybe I should stare at the sky more often. Maybe I should enjoy the night air instead of shielding myself from it from. Rather than letting the never-ending blackness overwhelm me, maybe I should appreciate it for what it is: a background for the brilliance of stars. After all, without darkness, there can't be light. ~ Marni Mann

Ah, but you, Darkness, you know all this. I tell you night after night. Nothing will shock you. Maybe I go on at you in the hope that there's something beyond you. Some nights I sit here and talk and sob and stare out into the blackness thinking that if I look hard enough I'll see the light behind. But I stay out until the break of day, waiting, hoping, and there's only sunrise again. ~ Tim Winton

[whiteness] has no real meaning divorced from the machinery of criminal power. The new people were something else before they were white - Catholic, Corsican, Welsh, Mennonite, Jewish - and if all our national hopes have any fulfillment, then they will have to be something else again. Perhaps they will truly become American and create a nobler basis for their myth. I cannot call it. As for now, it must be said that the process of washing the disparate tribes white, the elevation of the belief in being white, was not achieved through wine tastings and ice cream socials, but rather through the pillaging of life, liberty, labor and land; through the flaying of backs; the chaining of limbs; the strangling of dissidents; the destruction of families; the rape of mothers; the sale of children; and various other acts meant, first and foremost, to deny you and me the right to secure and govern our own bodies.

The new people are not original in this. Perhaps there has been, at some point in history, some great power whose elevation was exempt from the violent exploitation of other human bodies. If there has been, I have yet to discover it. But this banality of violence can never excuse America, because America makes no claim to the banal. America believes itself exceptional, the greatest and noblest nation ever to exist, a lone champion standing between the white city of democracy and terrorists, despots, barbarians, and other enemies of civilization. One cannot, at once, cl ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

Arguably the most important parallel between mass incarceration and Jim Crow is that both have served to define the meaning and significance of race in America. Indeed, a primary function of any racial caste system is to define the meaning of race in its time. Slavery defined what it meant to be black (a slave), and Jim Crow defined what it meant to be black (a second-class citizen). Today mass incarceration defines the meaning of blackness in America: black people, especially black men, are criminals. That is what it means to be black. ~ Michelle Alexander

I actually welcomed the blackness, because it hid my ugly. ~ Diana Gardin

When I am not with you
I am alone,
For there is no one else
And there is nothing
That comforts me but you.
When you are gone
Suddenly I am sick,
Blackness is round me,
There is nothing left.
I have tried many things,
Music and cities,
Stars in their constellations
And the sea,
But there is nothing
That comforts me but you;
And my poor pride bows down
Like grass in a rain-storm
Drenched with my longing.
The night is unbearable,
Oh let me go to you
For there is no one,
There is nothing
To comfort me but you. ~ Sara Teasdale

And, so to tell more about the South Watcher. A million years gone, as I have told, came it out from the blackness of the South, and grew steadily nearer through twenty thousand years; but so slow that in no one year could a man perceive that it had moved. ~ William Hope Hodgson

True, I used to see a lot of hope. I saw men tear down the veils behind which the truth had been hidden. But then the same men, when they have power in their hands at last, began to find the veils useful. They made many more. Life has not changed. Only some people have been growing, becoming different, that is all. After a youth spent fighting the white man, why should not the president discover as he grows older that his real desire has been to be like the white governor himself, to live above all the blackness in the big old slave castle? ~ Ayi Kwei Armah

If you're in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark ~ Haruki Murakami

I am a black man dedicated to expression; expression of the joy and pride of blackness. I consider myself neither poet, composer, or musician. These are merely tools used by sensitive men to carve out a piece of beauty or truth that they hope may lead to peace and salvation. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

Can you taste it Bruce? Can you taste the filth, the dirt, the oily blackness of that fossil fuel in our mouth as you choke and gag and spit it out? Do you still hear his voice in your head urging you to eat? Eat, eat eat. Your mother's cries. Do you hear them? You should be Bruce. Because I know that it's never left you alone. Now you can eat what you want to eat. For me, for you, for all the others. Now you can consume to your heart's content or your soul's destruction, whichever comes first. So eat. ~ Irvine Welsh