Alice Childress > Quotes

“Life is just a short walk from the cradle to the grave, and it sure behooves us to be kind to one another along the way.”
― Alice Childress

“Two things a man can give the woman he loves...his name and his protection...”
― Alice Childress, Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White

“Everybody's got some sin, but if it troubles your heart you're a gentle sinner, just a good soul gone wrong.”
― Alice Childress, Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White

“Some truth has no nourishment in it.”
― Alice Childress, Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White

“Gawd might forgive but people never will.”
― Alice Childress, Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White

“Sound like a promise that can never happen.”
― Alice Childress, Wine in the Wilderness

“A gift - be it a present, a kind word or a job done with care and love - explains itself!... and if receivin' it embarrasses you, it's because your 'thanks box' is warped.”
― Alice Childress

“But if we grow stronger...and rise higher than what's pullin' us down...Yes, rise higher than dirt...that fifty pound weight will lift and you'll be free, free without anybody's by-your-leave. Do something to wash out the sin.”
― Alice Childress, Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White

“Schoolteachers can be some hard-eyed people, with talkin eyes; they mouth sayin one thing and them eyes be screamin another.”
― Alice Childress, A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich

“One day I almost said it . . . after goin over the words in my mind, "Benjie, the greatest thing in the world is to love someone and they love you too." But when I opened my mouth, I said, "Benjie, brush the crumbs off your jacket.”
― Alice Childress, A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich

“Child, when hard luck fall it just keep fallin'.”
― Alice Childress, Wine in the Wilderness

“A woman need a man to claim, even if it's a dead one.”
― Alice Childress, Wine in the Wilderness

“That's how women are, always studyin' each other and wonderin' how they look up 'gainst the next.”
― Alice Childress, Wine in the Wilderness

“In this noisy world there are two places where one may yet go to do some quiet soul searching. Museums and public libraries... Soon people will have to go searching for quiet like they used to hunt wild game.”
― Alice Childress, Rainbow Jordan

“Don’t it give you the goose pimples when you realize that white people can kill us and get away with it? Just think of it! We are walkin’ targets everywhere we go—on the subway, in the street, everywhere.”
― Alice Childress, Like One of the Family: Conversations from a Domestic's Life

“Why, workin’ people are the grandest folks in the whole wide world. They set the steamships on the ocean and the lighthouse on the land, they give us our breakfast coffee and a roof over our heads at night.”
― Alice Childress, Like One of the Family: Conversations from a Domestic's Life

“That's sin, [...] leavin' on a lie.”
― Alice Childress, Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White

“He say, ’You can be somebody if you want.’ How the shit he don’t know I’m somebody right now? He think he somebody and I’m not.”
― Alice Childress, A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich

“...and nobody would write peace on no walls...'cause it would be peace...and our hearts would be free!”
― Alice Childress, Like One of the Family: Conversations from a Domestic's Life

“Like snowflakes the human pattern is never cast twice. We are uncommonly and marvelously intricate in thought and action, our problems are most complex and, too often, silently born.”
― Alice Childress

“dear little baby of the folks I work for, I got a present for you .. my whole damn life! I'm handin' it over to you & your ma & pa. if you got no money to pay, I wanna stay anyhow, my pleasure is to wait on you forever. to hell with my children & hooray for you!.. you stayin' up all night fixin' up Character Parts for me! givin' 'em what you call dignity! dignity! you know what your dignity is? a black straw hat with a flower stickin' up in front, hands folded cross my stomach, sayin' the same damn fool things .. only nice & easy & proper!" --trouble in mind (1955)”
― Alice Childress