Merchantry Black Quotes

What if history was changed? slavery reversed
Would black ladies see white boys and clinch they purse? ~ Fredro Starr

When hope crashes, almost immediately, a future smashes into smithereens- into a thousand broken mirror pieces, while you're left with your pallid, hopeless eyes staring back at you. You hear no sound as the tiny splinters fall into the soulless depths of despair. Somewhere so deep, a chasm akin to a black-hole, that nothing that goes in can ever be brought back. Not even your dreams. Or hopes. ~ Kirthi Jayakumar

He caught it one-handed, set it gently back in its place.
I clenched my teeth together to keep from screaming.
The Marquis stepped to the door, opened it. "Please bring Lord Branaric here."
Then he sat down in one of the window seats and looked out as though nothing had happened. I turned my back and glared out the other window, and a long, terrible silence drained my wits entirely until the door was suddenly thrust open by an impatient hand; and there was my brother, tall, thinner than I remembered, and clean. "Mel!" he exclaimed.
"Bran," I squawked, and hurled myself into his arms.
After a moment of incoherent questions on my part, he patted my back then held me out at arm's length. "Here, Mel, what's this? You look like death's cousin! Where'd you get that black eye? And your hands--" He turned over my wrists, squinting down at the healing rope burns. "Curse it, what's toward?"
"Debegri," I managed, laughing and crying at once. "Oh, Bran, that's not the worst of it. Look at this!" I stuck out my bare foot to show the purple scars. "That horrid trap--"
"We pulled 'em all out," he said, and grimaced. "It was the Hill Folk sent someone to tell us about you--that's a first, and did it scare me!--but by the time we got down the mountain, you were gone. I'm sorry, Mel. You were right."
"I was s-s-s-stupid. I got caught, and now we're both in trouble," I wailed into his shoulder.
The carved door snicked shut, and I realized we were al ~ Sherwood Smith

Our hearts are not black or white. Nor are they fat or thin. Our hearts are all the same. Our hearts only beat for love! ~ Avijeet Das

To the three men in gray coats and golden buttons just cresting the hill, the pantomime was a strange one. The speck of green merged with the gray, and the black with the flash of red, as they shot off toward north. ~ Katherine Rundell

Money has no color. If you can build a better mousetrap, it won't matter whether you're black or white. People will buy it. ~ A.G. Gaston

When in doubt, I always say, wear black. You can never go wrong with black. ~ Meg Cabot

I sha'n't let my prisoners go as easily as all that!' she said. 'Make my hair grow as thick and as black as yours, or else your husbands shall never see daylight again.' 'That is quite simple,' replied the elder sister; 'only you must do as we did - and perhaps you won't like the treatment.' 'If you can bear it, of course I can,' answered the witch. And so the girls told her they had first smeared their heads with pitch and then laid hot stones upon them. 'It is very painful,' said they, 'but there is no other way that we know of. And in order to make sure that all will go right, one of us will hold you down while the other pours on the pitch.' And so they did; and the elder sister let down her hair till it hung over the witch's eyes, so that she might believe it was her own hair growing. Then the other brought a huge stone, and, in short, there was an end of the witch. The sisters were savages who had never seen a missionary. ~ Andrew Lang

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise. ~ Maya Angelou

In Western Australia, minerals are being dug up from Aboriginal land and shipped to China for a profit of a billion dollars a week. In this, the richest, 'booming' state, the prisons bulge with stricken Aboriginal people, including juveniles whose mothers stand at the prison gates, pleading for their release. The incarceration of black Australians here is eight times that of black South Africans during the last decade of apartheid. ~ John Pilger

Usta be young usta be gifted - still black. ~ Wanda Coleman

Honesty," she announced.

Her slightly shaky voice echoed through the dark assembly hall. the single word and the long silence after it made the students in the audience sit up a little straighter in their seats. Then Gabriella began to recite:

"I see you there in front of me-
Your face, your hands, your eyes.
I hear you talk, I hear you tell
Your hopes, your dreams, your lies.

I walked with you, a sunlit trail,
Together hand in hand.
Then twilight came, and you were gone,
And now alone I stand.

The woods are cold, the trees are black,
The dark is closing in.
And you have gone away from me,
Your faultless light has dimmed.

Betrayal is an empty space,
Raw night, cold room, alone.
And no one can redeem your face,
Sweet knight, safe light, you're gone." ~ Alice Alfonsi

I introduced Putin to our Scottish terrier, Barney. He wasn't very impressed. On my next trip to Russia, Vladimir asked if I wanted to meet his dog, Koni. Sure, I said. As we walked the birch-lined grounds of his dacha, a big black Labrador came charging across the lawn. With a twinkle in his eye, Vladimir said, "Bigger, stronger, and faster than Barney." Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada [said], "You're lucky he only showed you his dog. ~ George W. Bush

So herein lies the paradox and predicament of young black men labeled criminals. A war has been declared on them, and they have been rounded up for engaging in precisely the same crimes that go largely ignored in middle-and upper-class white communities - possession ~ Michelle Alexander

Memories trickled through the pain as Onyx's eyes travelled down the tar road he knelt on. Its black, sour surface melted into the erratic horizon. ~ Ronel Van Tonder

Where you can starve to death in safety," I mutter. Then I glance quickly over my shoulder. Even here, even in the middle of nowhere, you worry someone might overhear you. When I was younger, I scared my mother to death, the things I would blurt out about District 12, about the people who rule our country, Panem, from the far-off city called the Capitol. Eventually I understood this would only lead us to more trouble. So I learned to hold my tongue and to turn my features into an indifferent mask so that no one could ever read my thoughts. Do my work quietly in school. Make only polite small talk in the public market. Discuss little more than trades in the Hob, which is the black market where I make most of my money. Even at home, where I am less pleasant, I avoid discussing tricky topics. Like the reaping, or food ~ Suzanne Collins

He just wasn't good at being a cross between a teddy bear and just a friend. ~ Shayla Black

That one smooth black eye stared, and reflected in it I fancied I could see the cyclopeon city, and the endless column of the marching dead. ~ Stephen King

I'll join with black despair against my soul, and to myself become an enemy. ~ Richard III

All things that we ordained festival,
Turn from their office to black funeral;
Our instruments to melancholy bells,
Our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast,
Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change,
Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse,
And all things change them to the contrary. ~ William Shakespeare

Ever at Thy glowing altar Must my heart grow sick and falter, Wishing He I served were black. ~ Countee Cullen

When they got back in the Corvette, Gretel fished around in her shopping bad. "What is this?"
She had chosen a black tank suit, but somehow a pink bikini had wound up among her purchases.
"Don't be mad," Margot pleaded.
"I'm not wearing this." Gretel tossed the bikini back in the bag. All the same, she couldn't help but notice the fabric was the same exact shade as the palest climbing roses. The tint of seashells on a deserted beach, or the mouth of someone you might want to kiss. ~ Alice Hoffman

To make it tougher, on the eve of the election 250 hooded Klansman formed a motorcade that snaked its way through Lake County, "warning blacks not to vote if they valued their lives." Trailing behind the motorcade in a big Oldsmobile, his trademark white Stetson visible to all, was the incumbent sheriff himself, "making no attempt to interfere" when the Klansmen stopped to burn a cross in front of a black juke joint in Leesburg. ~ Gilbert King

I work in three shades of black. ~ Rei Kawakubo

Everybody needs to show respect to each others' ways and the cultural life that you get on this planet. Don't get caught up on 'I'm brown, black, white, red, blue, whatever.' You gotta ask, what were you called before 1492? All these names we're using now are just an illusion made to keep us fighting each other. ~ Afrika Bambaataa

There was, like, this black hole where the world used to be, and we were both falling toward it. What could we hold on to? ~ Rick Yancey

What do you do when you find yourself out in a lie - even a white one? Well, one thing for sure, you don't put on black, you don't mourn and beat out a staccato mea culpa on your breast. You go! Get the hell out! Take a chance! Forget you're an American, living in the suburbs of success, hoping to move into the big city ... You go! ~ Vincent Price

Another Black Label motto. That's what I think life is. It's just another bridge to cross. You ask no questions. Whatever work it is you gotta do, you gotta go over it, under it, through it, around it, to do it. ~ Zakk Wylde

Granny beads are what they're called when a grandma works the garden all day - you always see them - they have a handkerchief around their neck with a lot of dust on them, and then the sweat will go down and make these black beads of sweat and dirt around their neck. And that's what they call granny beads. ~ Randy Houser

The root of the black man's hatred is rage,
and he does not so much had the white man
as simply as want the out of his way,
and, more than that,
out of his children's way.

The root of the white man's hatred is terror,
a bottomless and nameless terror,
which focuses on this dread figure,
an entity which lives only in his mind. ~ James Baldwin

Perhaps [God] resided only above England. Or perhaps He had retired and now lived quietly in some remote Condominium Galaxy where He enjoyed a game of intergalactic golf now and again, deftly driving, pitching and putting stars into eighteen black holes in space, loosing devils on us whenever He scored a bogey. Or perhaps He hid behind every tree, rock and bush, or was closer than my very breath. Whatever He did, however He did it, Whoever and Whatever He wasn't or was, if he wanted my attention He'd have to leave off making Himself so scarce. ~ David James Duncan

Mithridatism, it's called. Isn't that a funny name? The process of eating poison to build up immunity. So long as I don't die from it, I'll be harder to kill ~ Holly Black

It is bad enough to be white and poor; it is worse still to be black, or brown, and female, and young, and poor. Simply said, race makes class hurt more. ~ Michael Eric Dyson

It was bad enough being black...How much lower down the social scale could one go than to be seen as a black, uneducated rugby league player. ~ Cec Thompson

But clouds bellied out in the sultry heat, the sky cracked open with a crimson gash, spewed flame-and the ancient forest began to smoke. By morning there was a mass of booming, fiery tongues, a hissing, crashing, howling all around, half the sky black with smoke, and the bloodied sun just barely visible.

And what can little men do with their spades, ditches, and pails? The forest is no more, it was devoured by fire: stumps and ash. Perhaps illimitable fields will be plowed here one day, perhaps some new, unheard-of wheat will ripen here and men from Arkansas with shaven faces will weigh in their palms the heavy golden grain. Or perhaps a city will grow up-alive with ringing sound and motion, all stone and crystal and iron-and winged men will come here flying over seas and mountains from all ends of the world. But never again the forest, never again the blue winter silence and the golden silence of summer. And only the tellers of tales will speak in many-colored patterned words about what had been, about wolves and bears and stately green-coated century-old grandfathers, about old Russia; they will speak about all this to us who have seen it with our own eyes ten years - a hundred years! - ago, and to those others, the winged ones, who will come in a hundred years to listen and to marvel at it all as at a fairy tale. ("In Old Russia") ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin

The empowerment of black women constitutes the empowerment of our entire community. ~ Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

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

When I do a picture and it's 90% black, like 'Bird,' I use 90% black people. ~ Clint Eastwood

Stirless, I stand at the window, and in the black bowl of the sky glows like a golden drop of honey the mellow moon ~ Vladimir Nabokov

She said it out loud, the words distributed into a room that was full of cold air and books. Books everywhere! Each wall was armed with overcrowded yet immaculate shelving. It was barely possible to see paintwork. There were all different styles and sizes of lettering on the spines of the black, the red, the gray, the every-colored books. It was one of the most beautiful things Liesel Meminger had ever seen.
With wonder, she smiled.
That such a room existed! ~ Markus Zusak

Here I love you.
In the dark pines the wind disentangles itself.
The moon glows like phosphorous on the vagrant waters.
Days, all one kind, go chasing each other.

The snow unfurls in dancing figures.
A silver gull slips down from the west.
Sometimes a sail. High, high stars.
Oh the black cross of a ship.
Alone.


Sometimes I get up early and even my soul is wet.
Far away the sea sounds and resounds.
This is a port.

Here I love you.
Here I love you and the horizon hides you in vain.
I love you still among these cold things.
Sometimes my kisses go on those heavy vessels
that cross the sea towards no arrival.
I see myself forgotten like those old anchors.

The piers sadden when the afternoon moors there.
My life grows tired, hungry to no purpose.
I love what I do not have. You are so far.
My loathing wrestles with the slow twilights.
But night comes and starts to sing to me.

The moon turns its clockwork dream.
The biggest stars look at me with your eyes.
And as I love you, the pines in the wind
want to sing your name with their leaves of wire.
Pablo Neruda ~ Pablo Neruda