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Top Ayana Mathis Quotes

Browse top 35 most favorite famous quotes and sayings by Ayana Mathis.

Favorite Ayana Mathis Quotes

1. "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." ~ Ayana Mathis
2. "I couldn't stand to be a fool a second time,' Hattie said. 'I couldn't stand it." ~ Ayana Mathis
3. "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." ~ Ayana Mathis
4. "Fine doesn't call before dawn." ~ Ayana Mathis
5. "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." ~ Ayana Mathis
6. "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." ~ Ayana Mathis
7. "I have looked at my father many times and wondered how he could stand knowing he was my mother's ruin. He was too weak to leave her. Mother should have thrown him out and saved them both, like Sissy was saving the two of us." ~ Ayana Mathis
8. "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." ~ Ayana Mathis
9. "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." ~ Ayana Mathis
10. "God had indeed set it twirling and twisting every which way when he put black people to owning their own kind." ~ Ayana Mathis
11. "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." ~ Ayana Mathis
12. "...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." ~ Ayana Mathis
13. "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." ~ Ayana Mathis
14. "His pain was his most precious and secret possession, and Six held on to it as fiercely as a jewel robbed from a corpse." ~ Ayana Mathis
15. "The Lord brings us into this world naked, but I don't suppose he means us to stay that way" ~ Ayana Mathis
16. "Hattie was like a lake of smooth, silvered ice, under which nothing could be seen or known." ~ Ayana Mathis
17. "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." ~ Ayana Mathis
18. "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." ~ Ayana Mathis
19. "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." ~ Ayana Mathis
20. "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?" ~ Ayana Mathis
21. "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." ~ Ayana Mathis
22. "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." ~ Ayana Mathis
23. "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." ~ Ayana Mathis
24. "You ought to go now before she wakes up," Hattie said. She handed her daughter to Pearl. I'm in the floor, she thought." ~ Ayana Mathis
25. "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." ~ Ayana Mathis
26. "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." ~ Ayana Mathis
27. "God doesn't come to sit on the porch and sip lemonade. He comes to take over." ~ Ayana Mathis
28. "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." ~ Ayana Mathis
29. "I wonder if the brass understands that people are getting killed." ~ Ayana Mathis
30. "Hattie's children died in the order in which they were born: first Philadelphia, then Jubilee." ~ Ayana Mathis
31. "She wished the man outside really were Thomas, so she and Billups could again have the same enemy and the same fear.O" ~ Ayana Mathis
32. "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." ~ Ayana Mathis
33. "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." ~ Ayana Mathis
34. "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." ~ Ayana Mathis
35. "It had been easy to be comfortable with each other when there was a glass wall between them." ~ Ayana Mathis

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Today's Quote

Militarism has been by far the commonest cause of the breakdown of civilizations. The single art of war makes progress at the expense of all the arts of peace."
Author: Arnold Joseph Toynbee

What Did Ayana Mathis Talk About?

Tie
She
Ear
Wit
Thin
Hey
Hen
Bee
Tan
Six
Con
Ought
Thou
King
Stay
Old
Able
Said
Child
Rain
Though
Place
Dark
Children

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