Ravi Howard > Quotes

“...the phone rang.

When the phone rang so early in the morning, it oftentimes meant somebody was dead. An elderly person had passed in the night. A Friday night traffic fatality. The families of deceased would set about the task of notifying family and friends, and somewhere among the sad litany of phone calls, they dialed our number.”
― Ravi Howard

“Unfortunately, honesty hasn't always been a part of the job description for the police force, especially when dealing with our people. Today I must appeal to their sense of integrity, because we need the Mobile Police Department. Before we can do our job, they've got to do theirs...”
― Ravi Howard

“I'm saying it to your face. Just because you can drive a car doesn't mean you can fix one. Eating ham ain't the same as raising a pig.”
― Ravi Howard

“Gray’s Electronics and Records had a display in the window, a fake fireplace with a flashing jukebox where the flames would have been. On the record”
― Ravi Howard, Driving the King

“Familiar words for dead black boys portrayed as complicit in their own demise. Michael Donald's body had been hanged on a Mobile street, and the police were doing the same thing to his name.”
― Ravi Howard

“guards, carrying on, warming themselves around the”
― Ravi Howard, Driving the King

“war in Bastogne. I saw Europe from a truck with our gun towed behind. We’d named ours Joe”
― Ravi Howard, Driving the King

“It was just tiresome thinking about folks having to fight for the least little thing. I loved my people for fighting, but hated the reason why, and that left me with that crosscut notion of pride and anger pulling in different directions, two kinds of muscle fighting for the same piece of bone.”
― Ravi Howard

“the road, so he must have driven the”
― Ravi Howard, Driving the King

“Forty years’ worth of days, and ones like those are the ones I remember most, not because I want to but because I have no choice.”
― Ravi Howard, Like Trees, Walking

“Seeing Mattie sitting across from me was a new kind of pain. She put on a good face for me,”
― Ravi Howard, Driving the King

“She got herself a boyfriend she wants us to meet. He's studying chemistry. A senior. She said that 3 or 4 times on the phone. Senior. Like it's supposed to mean something to me, as long as I been grown. Senior ain't nothing but a year. Young man's distinction.”
― Ravi Howard

“Ask yourself this question: Of this had been a white child found dead in a black neighborhood, would they be knocking on every door? 'Yes, sir.' Searching high and low? 'Yes, indeed.' It this had been a white child, would they paint him as a sinner and not a saint? 'Lord, no...”
― Ravi Howard