Christina Carson > Quotes

“I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument while the song I cam to sing remains unsung.
Rabindranath Tagore”
― Christina Carson, Suffer the Little Children

“I knew in that moment, we were never meant to surrender our childlike innocence, to trade a world in which we fit like a glove for one that hung on us like ill-fitting hand-me-downs. However, all about us insisted on our membership. And instead of a handshake or a mystical password as entrance into this spurious society, we agreed instead to share a lie, the one that says we’re safe, secure, and fulfilled living this way.”
― Christina Carson, Dying to Know

“It struck me that the beauty we attribute to children isn’t something they have that we don’t. It's something they do, which we have long since stopped doing—just describing things as we see them, the simple, unadorned facts.”
― Christina Carson, Suffer the Little Children

“But here in my hometown, history was like a fine dust that settled out on everything. There was nothing to counter it. The culture had been hardened by a religion suspect of joy, yet fascinated by sin. Its moral acceptance of slavery eroded compassion. And gentility became a necessary pretense to cover the resentment created long ago when the North’s industrial prestige trumped the agrarian South. It was not an easy place to feel lighthearted or triumphant. Nor was it an easy place to remember the beauty of wonder and awe.”
― Christina Carson, Where It Began: Book One: Accidents of Birth Trilogy

“Fo’ it be so clear to me now, with my family being black an white, that though we blacks have it very hard fo’ very long, we don’t own suffering. Abuse, slavery, injustice, an tribulation be part of human living. An if there be a question that be worth axing, rather than it be bout white or black, we might be wanting to ax how come it’s always us humans who be suffering an be mean to one another. We might want a be axing that instead. From: "Accidents of Birth Trilogy”
― Christina Carson

“When you come from a long line of suffering, there be no way to kid youself ‘bout its poison, how it get in the veins of families an from generation to generation be passed on like some horrible disease. I think white folk ofttimes can kid theyselves into thinking that such an act begin an end in juss one place. Or maybe they juss be so ‘fraid of what all that mean, they be able to convince theyselves somethun be true when they know deep down it ain’t. But when you come from a people who have suffered for generations, such lying to youself juss make things worse. Fo’ that poison can reach a point where they be no way to end its taint, an then people die; even if they don’ be a lying down in they graves, they be dead to life, an love, beauty an God. Yes, indeed, yes indeed they be. Miss Imogene”
― Christina Carson, Where It Began: Book One: Accidents of Birth Trilogy