Sara Collins > Quotes

“But the mind is its own place, as Milton said, it can make a Hell of Heaven and a Heaven of Hell. How does it do that? By remembering, or forgetting. The only tricks a mind can play.”
― Sara Collins

“I was a woman who loved a woman, chief among the womanly sins, like barreness and thinking.”
― Sara Collins

“there were two things I loved: all those books I read, and all the people who wrote them.”
― Sara Collins, The Confessions of Frannie Langton

“Not one thing in the world more dangerous than a white woman when she is bored.”
― Sara Collins

“It was all in your head, they say. But where else is love if not in your head? And as Sal used to say, why is that fucking is always our story, but love is always theirs?”
― sara collins

“No matter what any moment holds, memory makes of it either nothing at all, or unending terror, or ceaseless grief.”
― Sara Collins

“I think the point of reading is not to feel more a part of the world, but less. To take oneself out of it. On paper, everything can be hammered into shape, though the world is shapeless.”
― Sara Collins

“Circumspection is a liar's refuge. Nevertheless both truth and silence smother guilt.”
― sara collins

“I will tell you what abolishing the trade did. When a man cannot buy stock, he breeds it. Every woman at Paradise was a belly woman then! Lining up on Sundays, waiting at the front porch for their half-dollars and their maccarronis. "See Massa! Me breed good new neger for Massa. Big strong neger.”
― Sara Collins

“…some men see silence as a net to toss their own words into.”
― Sara collins , The Confessions of Frannie Langton

“They wrote, yes. But thousands could, if someone would bother to teach them. And everything they wrote was written for whites. Petitions. Appeals. It's another of this world's laws. Blacks will write only about suffering, and only for white people, as if out purpose here is to change their mind.”
― Sara Collins

“I see that my own life can be a story you tell yourself, that you can both be the person reading and the thing being read.”
― Sara Collins

“The truth is not a cloth every man can cut to fit himself. The truth is there was love as well as hate. The truth is the love hurt worse.”
― Sara Collins

“Because life boils down to nothing, in spite of all the fuss, yet novels make it possible to believe it is something, after all.”
― Sara Collins

“A man is merely spoiled by his vices while a woman is soiled by hers.”
― Sara Collins

“Why is it that every white you'll ever meet either wants to tame you or rescue you?”
― sara collins

“Whenever I stand on the edge of a great height – a bridge, a balcony – I am swept by a sudden desire to leap. But melancholia is not the leap, it is the desire. The constant irrepressible agonising urge.”
― Sara Collins, The Confessions of Frannie Langton

“A man writes to separate himself from the common history. A woman writes to join it.”
― Sara Collins

“Life is a brief candle but love is a craving for time.”
― Sara Collins

“I'd belonged to Langton, you must remember, grown as if from a mango pit he'd tossed out of a window, and therefore still thought I was HIS to give... That is what I was trying to tell you, when you asked, "Why didn't you just RUN?"
"I kept forgetting... that I was no longer owned”
― Sara Collins

“What no one will admit about the anti-slavers is that they've all got a slaver's appetite for misery, even if they want to do different things with it.”
― Sara Collins

“What would you want to be remembered for? If you had one last page and one last hour, what would you write? In the end, this is what I choose. My account of myself. The only thing I'll be able to leave behind. That there were two things I loved: all those books I read, and all the people who wrote them. Because life boils down to nothing, in spite of all the fuss, yet novels make it possible to believe it is something, after all.”
― Sara Collins

“That was a mistake. I should l have remembered that there are many who find an educated black more threatening than a savage one.”
― Sara Collins

“My trial starts the way my life did: a squall of elbows and shoving and spit.”
― Sara Collins

“Looking back now I see that your own life can be a story that you tell yourself, that you can be both the person reading and the thing being read.”
― Sara Collins

“You going learn. We are not the ones ask the questions, we the ones answer them. And the answer always yes.”
― Sara Collins