Maurice > Maurice's Quotes

“Guess what? None of these guys said anything when the Trump administration added $1 trillion to the federal budget deficit by the end of 2019—before a single dime was spent on COVID-19 relief. They were rubber stamps for it in Congress. Many of them who raised huge stinks about TARP were only too happy to let Trump bail out farmers hurt by his trade war with China. These are the same people who were willing to destroy our economy to make their point but went on to suddenly abandon this core principle.”
― John Boehner, On the House: A Washington Memoir

“We've all of us got to make up our minds to the sacrifice of some thing. I mean something more than just the ordinary sacrifices in life, not so much for the sake of the next generation as for the sake of some principle, for the sake of some immaterial quality like pride or intense self-respect or even a saving complacency; a spiritual tonic which the race needs perhaps just as much as the body might need iron or whatever it does need to give the proper kind of resistance. There are some things which an individual might want, but which he'd just have to give up forever for the sake of the more important whole.”
― Jessie Redmon Fauset, Plum Bun: A Novel Without A Moral

“Over the next few months, I set out to understand why in our country with the most expensive and advanced medical technology in the world, growing numbers of American women, disproportionately Black women, were dying as a result of pregnancy and childbirth, including African American women whose income and education should protect them.”
― Linda Villarosa, Under the Skin

“In March 2002, the National Academy of Sciences, a private, nonprofit society of scholars, released a high-profile report documenting the unequivocal existence of racial bias in medical care, which many thought would mark a real turning point. Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care was so brutal and damning that it would seem impossible to turn away. The report, authored by a committee of mostly white medical educators, nurses, behavioral scientists, economists, health lawyers, sociologists, and policy experts, took an exhaustive plunge into more than 480 previous studies. Because of the knee-jerk tendency to assume that health disparities were the end result of differences in class, not race, they were careful to compare subjects with similar income and insurance coverage. The report found rampant, widespread racial bias, including that people of color were less likely to be given appropriate heart medications or to undergo bypass surgery or receive kidney dialysis or transplants. Several studies revealed significant racial differences in who receives appropriate cancer diagnostic tests and treatments, and people of color were also less likely to receive the most sophisticated treatments for HIV/AIDS. These inequities, the report concluded, contribute to higher death rates overall for Black people and other people of color and lower survival rates compared with whites suffering from comparable illnesses of similar severity.”
― Linda Villarosa, Under the Skin

“There is no privilege as great as that enjoyed by those 'To Whom Things Come Easily'.”
― Nick Laird, Glover's Mistake

“She was privileged enough to feel at home anywhere, and to equate squalor with authenticity.”
― Nick Laird, Glover's Mistake

“We would all rather be loved for what we seem to be.”
― Nick Laird, Glover's Mistake

“She was so tired of him thinking he knew better than her because he had been gifted with a penis. She was so tired of him thinking he knew better than her because he was white.”
― Nekesa Afia, Dead Dead Girls

“Louise realized that she should want more. That she should strive to get more out of life than the women who came before her, that she should want real freedom and to follow her dreams. In a world where women got so little and Black women got even less, she had to be better.”
― Nekesa Afia, Dead Dead Girls

“Mama used to tell me that blood is everything, but I think we’re all out here unlearning that sentiment, scraping our knees and asking strangers to patch us back up.”
― Leila Mottley, Nightcrawling

“That was before I learned that life won't give you reasons for none of it, that sometimes fathers disappear and little girls don't make it to another birthday and mothers forget to be mothers.”
― Leila Mottley

“He's here, sunshine probably blistering the back of his neck, staring at me, hoping for anything different than what I've always given him. He doesn't deserve fractions and that's all I got, all I'm willing to give.”
― Leila Mottley, Nightcrawling

“All these words that other people use to label us, to decide who we are, who we gon’ be.”
― Kai Harris, What the Fireflies Knew

“Our children don’t have to make the same mistakes we did.” Granddaddy speaks, calm. “Let ’em decide who to be for themselves.”
― Kai Harris, What the Fireflies Knew

“The mythology of New Orleans—that it is always the place for a good time; that its citizens are the happiest people alive, willing to smile, dance, cook, and entertain for you; that it is a progressive city open to whimsy and change—can sometimes suffocate the people who live and suffer under the place’s burden, burying them within layers and layers of signifiers, making it impossible to truly get at what is dysfunctional about the city.”
― Sarah M. Broom, The Yellow House

“Storms of all sorts, were facts of our lives. Those images shown on the news of fellow citizens drowned, abandoned, and calling for help were not news to us, but still further evidence of what we long ago. I knew, for example, that we lived in an unequal, masquerading world when I was eight and crossing the dangerous Chef Menteur Highway with Alvin. I knew it at Livingston Middle School when I did not learn because no one was teaching me. I knew it in 1994, when we were petrified, afraid, the law might kill us—knew it before, during, and after the Water. Katrina's postscript—the physical wasteland—was only a manifestation of all that ailed me and my family in mind and spirit.”
― Sarah M. Broom, The Yellow House

“Solving a problem for which you know there’s an answer is like climbing a mountain with a guide, along a trail someone else has laid. In mathematics, the truth is somewhere out there in a place no one knows, beyond all the beaten paths. And it’s not always at the top of the mountain. It might be in a crack on the smoothest cliff or somewhere deep in the valley.”
― Yoko Ogawa, The Housekeeper and the Professor

“For a torture to be effective, the pain has to be spread out; it has to come at regular intervals, with no end in sight. The water falls , drop after drop after drop, like the second hand of a watch, carving up time. The shock of each individual drop is insignificant, but the sensation is impossible to ignore. At first, one might manage to think about other things, but after five hours, after ten hours, it becomes unendurable. The repeated stimulation excites the nerves to a point where they literally explode, and every sensation in the body is absorbed into that one spot on the forehead---indeed, you come to feel that you are nothing but a forehead, into which a fine needle is being forced millimeter by millimeter. You can’t sleep or even speak, hypnotized by a suffering that is greater than any mere pain. In general, the victim goes mad before a day has passed.”
― Yoko Ogawa, Revenge

“Some people can't see softness without wanting to hurt it”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice.”
― Henry Louis Gates Jr

“You fightin’ for ya life. Like I always told you, you use your heart to love but you use your head to fight.”
― Wanda M. Morris, All Her Little Secrets

“When God brings two individuals together, sometimes there are trials, but He’d never put you on the same path if you weren’t meant to walk together.”
― Vanessa Riley, Madeline's Protector

“Prep Time: 15 minutes Cook Time: 20 minutes Serves: 6 Ingredients BISCUITS 2 cups flour 1 tablespoon baking powder 1 teaspoon kosher salt 1/2 cup shortening (butter, lard or vegetable shortening) 3/4 cup milk or buttermilk SAUSAGE GRAVY 1-pound breakfast pork sausage 1/3 cup flour 3 cups milk salt and black pepper, as needed Preparation Preheat oven to 450°F. In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt; cut in shortening until mixture has a crumbly texture. Add milk and mix into a dough, adding flour as needed until dough pulls away from side of bowl. On a lightly floured surface, roll or pat dough ¾-inch thick. Using a biscuit cutter, cut out biscuits, place on a baking sheet. Bake for 15 minutes, or until lightly browned on top. To make gravy: pan fry breakfast sausage until fully cooked, breaking up large pieces. Using a slotted spoon, transfer cooked sausage to bowl. Add flour to pan dripping and whisk until golden. Slowly add milk and whisk over low heat until thickened. Add reserved sausage and stir to blend. Season to taste with salt and black pepper. Serve split biscuits topped with gravy.”
― Piper Huguley, Sweet Tea: A perfect heartwarming romance from Hallmark Publishing

“As we encounter each other, we see our diversity — of background, race, ethnicity, belief – and how we handle that diversity will have much to say about whether we will in the end be able to rise successfully to the great challenges we face today.”
― Dan Smith, The State of the World Atlas

“Dysfunctional Belief: Happiness is having it all. Reframe: Happiness is letting go of what you don’t need.”
― Bill Burnett, Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life

“Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche