Claude Brown > Quotes

“Reno was somebody from the streets. I think he took to me because he saw me as somebody from the streets, somebody who hated to see the sun go down on Eighth Avenue, who would run up on Amsterdam Avenue, follow the sun down the hill, across Broadway, to the Drive and the Hudson River, and then would wait for the sun to come back. I guess Reno thought he'd found somebody who was destined to be in the streets of Harlem for the rest of his life.”
― Claude Brown, Manchild in the Promised Land

“I never wanted to go, because there was so much out there in that street.
You might see somebody get cut or killed. I could go out in the street for an afternoon,
and I would see so much that, when I came in the house, I’d be talking and talking for what seemed like hours.
Dad would say, ‘Boy, why don’t you stop that lyin’? You know you didn’t see all that. You know you didn’t see anybody do all that.’
But I knew I had.”
― Claude Brown, Manchild in the Promised Land

“K.B. was always trying to jerk off, and he said he shot one time; but I didn't see it, so I didn't believe it. But about a year after K.B. and I had moved to Aggrey House, I heard K.B. come tearing down the stairs yelling as loud as he could. It was around one in the morning. He woke up everybody in the first-floor dormitory. I was awake and wondering what was going on, when K.B. came running into the dormitory with his dick in his hand and yelling, "Claude, I did it! I did it!" When he reached my bed and yelled out, "Man, I shot," all the beds in the dormitory started jumping, and everybody crowded around my bed with flashlights before K.B. stopped yelling.”
― Claude Brown, Man in the Promised Land