For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snow-storms and rain-storms, and did my duty faithfully; surveyor, if not of high...ways, then of forest paths and all across-lot routes, keeping them open, and ravines bridged and passable at all seasons, where the public heel had testified to their utility. I have looked after the wild stock of the town,... and I have had an eye to the unfrequented nooks and corners of the farm.... I have watered the red huckleberry, the sand cherry and the nettle-tree, the red pine and the black ash, the white grape and the yellow violet, which might have withered else in dry seasons. In short, I went on thus for a long time (I may say it without boasting), faithfully minding my business, till it became more and more evident that my townsmen would not after all admit me into the list of town officers, nor make my place a sinecure with a moderate allowance. My accounts, which I can swear to have kept faithfully, I have, indeed, never got audited, still less accepted, still less paid and settled. However, I have not set my heart on that.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Only the white, tremendous foam of the street has any importance, The new white flowers that are beginning to shoot up about ...now.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Other men wear white suits in summer and it doesn't seem to bother them. But my white suit seems to be a little whiter than theirs.... I think also that it may have something written on the back of it, although I can't find it when I take the suit off.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am so tired of taking to others translating my life for the deaf, the blind,... the "I really want to know what your life is like without giving up any of my privileges to live it" white women the "I want to live my white life with Third World women's style and keep my skin class privileges" dykesLESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... two great areas of deafness existed in the South: White Southerners had no ears to hear that which threatened their Dream. And... colored Southerners had none to hear that which could reduce their anger.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... as a result of generations of betrayal, it's nearly impossible for Southern Negroes to trust a Southern white. No matter what ...he does or what he suffers, a white liberal is never established beyond suspicion in the hearts of the minority.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The white youth of today have begun to react to the fact that the "American Way of Life" is a fossil of history. What do they care... if their old baldheaded and crew-cut elders don't dig their caveman mops? They couldn't care less about the old, stiffassed honkies who don't like their new dances: Frug, Monkey, Jerk, Swim, Watusi. All they know is that it feels good to swing to way-out body-rhythms instead of dragassing across the dance floor like zombies to the dead beat of mind-smothered Mickey Mouse music.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The "paper tiger" hero, James Bond, offering the whites a triumphant image of themselves, is saying what many whites want desperat...ely to hear reaffirmed: I am still the White Man, lord of the land, licensed to kill, and the world is still an empire at my feet.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »