Lindsey > Lindsey's Quotes

“If you could do it, I suppose, it would be a good idea to live your life in a straight line - starting, say, in the Dark Wood of Error, and proceeding by logical steps through Hell and Purgatory and into Heaven. Or you could take the King's Highway past the appropriately named dangers, toils, and snares, and finally cross the River of Death and enter the Celestial City. But that is not the way I have done it, so far. I am a pilgrim, but my pilgrimage has been wandering and unmarked. Often what has looked like a straight line to me has been a circling or a doubling back. I have been in the Dark Wood of Error any number of times. I have known something of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, but not always in that order. The names of many snares and dangers have been made known to me, but I have seen them only in looking back. Often I have not known where I was going until I was already there. I have had my share of desires and goals, but my life has come to me or I have gone to it mainly by way of mistakes and surprises. Often I have received better than I deserved. Often my fairest hopes have rested on bad mistakes. I am an ignorant pilgrim, crossing a dark valley. And yet for a long time, looking back, I have been unable to shake off the feeling that I have been led - make of that what you will.”
― Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow

“Injustice is an evil in society that must be fought.”
― John M. Perkins, Dream with Me: Race, Love, and the Struggle We Must Win

“You know that wedding ring doesn’t have magical powers. It doesn’t give you licence to be cruel, and it can’t keep you faithful.”
― Adriana Trigiani, Big Cherry Holler

“Somewhere in my past, I learned that if you separate yourself, you don't get hurt. Pain can be avoided.”
― Adriana Trigiani, Big Cherry Holler

“The best thing a father can do for his son is love his mother.”
― Adriana Trigiani, Big Stone Gap

“The home is the center of life. It is a refuge from the grind of work, the pressure of school, and the menace of the streets. We say that at home, we can “be ourselves.” Everywhere else, we are someone else. At home, we remove our masks.

The home is the wellspring of personhood. It is where our identity takes root and blossoms, where as children, we imagine, play, and question, and as adolescents, we retreat and try. As we grow older, we hope to settle into a place to raise a family or pursue work. When we try to understand ourselves, we often begin by considering the kind of home in which we were raised.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“it is hard to argue that housing is not a fundamental human need. Decent, affordable housing should be a basic right for everybody in this country. The reason is simple: without stable shelter, everything else falls apart.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“Every condition exists,” Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote, “simply because someone profits by its existence. This economic exploitation is crystallized in the slum.” Exploitation. Now, there’s a word that has been scrubbed out of the poverty debate.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“If incarceration had come to define the lives of men from impoverished black neighborhoods, eviction was shaping the lives of women. Poor black men were locked up. Poor black women were locked out.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“No moral code or ethical principle, no piece of scripture or holy teaching, can be summoned to defend what we have allowed our country to become.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“Eviction is a cause, not just a condition, of poverty.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“Our cities have become unaffordable to our poorest families, and this problem is leaving a deep and jagged scar on our next generation.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“By and large, the poor do not want some small life. They don't want to game the system or eke out an existence; they want to thrive and contribute.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“No one thought the poor more undeserving than the poor themselves.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“Poverty was a relationship, I thought, involving poor and rich people alike. To understand poverty, I needed to understand that relationship. This sent me searching for a process that bound poor and rich people together in mutual dependence and struggle. Eviction was such a process.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“Sometimes, the truth comes out slow.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“Establishing publicly funded legal services for low-income families in housing court would be a cost-effective measure that would prevent homelessness, decrease evictions, and give poor families a fair shake.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“What else is a nation but a patchwork of cities and towns; cities and towns a patchwork of neighborhoods; and neighborhoods a patchwork of homes?”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“We have failed to fully appreciate how deeply housing is implicated in the creation of poverty. Not everyone living in a distressed neighborhood is associated with gang members, parole officers, employers, social workers, or pastors. But nearly all of them have a landlord.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“The rent eats first.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“Exploitation. Now, there’s a word that has been scrubbed out of the poverty debate. 42 It is a word that speaks to the fact that poverty is not just a product of low incomes. It is also a product of extractive markets. Boosting poor people’s incomes by increasing the minimum wage or public benefits, say, is absolutely crucial. But not all of those extra dollars will stay in the pockets of the poor. Wage hikes are tempered if rents rise along with them, just as food stamps are worth less if groceries in the inner city cost more—and they do, as much as 40 percent more, by one estimate. 43 Poverty is two-faced—a matter of income and expenses, input and output—and in a world of exploitation, it will not be effectively ameliorated if we ignore this plain fact.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“Exploitation thrives when it comes to the essentials, like housing and food. Most of the 12 million Americans who take out high-interest payday loans do so not to buy luxury items or cover unexpected expenses but to pay the rent or gas bill, buy food, or meet other regular expenses. Payday loans are but one of many financial techniques—from overdraft fees to student loans for for-profit colleges—specifically designed to pull money from the pockets of the poor.46 If the poor pay more for their housing, food, durable goods, and credit, and if they get smaller returns on their educations and mortgages (if they get returns at all), then their incomes are even smaller than they appear. This is fundamentally unfair.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“they tried to survive in color, to season the suffering with pleasure.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“It is only after we begin to see a street as our street, a public park as our park, a school as our school, that we can become engaged citizens, dedicating our time and resources for worthwhile causes: joining the Neighborhood Watch, volunteering to beautify a playground, or running for school board.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“People like Larraine lived with so many compounded limitations that it was difficult to imagine the amount of good behavior or self-control that would allow them to lift themselves out of poverty. The distance between grinding poverty and even stable poverty could be so vast that those at the bottom had little hope of climbing out even if they pinched every penny. So they chose not to. Instead, they tried to survive in color, to season the suffering with pleasure.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“Families who spend more on housing spend less on their children.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“Tenants able to pay their rent in full each month could take advantage of legal protections designed to keep their housing safe and decent. Not only could they summon a building inspector without fear of eviction, but they also had the right to withhold rent until certain repairs were made.12 But when tenants fell behind, these protections dissolved. Tenants in arrears were barred from withholding or escrowing rent; and they tempted eviction if they filed a report with a building inspector. It was not that low-income renters didn’t know their rights. They just knew those rights would cost them.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“Losing your home and possessions and often your job; being stamped with an eviction record and denied government housing assistance; relocating to degrading housing in poor and dangerous neighborhoods; and suffering from increased material hardship, homelessness, depression, and illness - this is eviction's fallout. Eviction does not simply drop poor families into a dark valley, a trying yet relatively brief detour on life's journey. It fundamentally redirects their way, casting them onto a different, and much more difficult, path. Eviction is a case, not just a condition, of poverty.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“Working on behalf of the common good is the engine of democracy, vital to our communities, cities, states—and, ultimately, the nation. It is “an outflow of the idealism and moralism of the American people,” wrote Gunnar Myrdal.3 Some have called this impulse “love of country” or “patriotism” or the “American spirit.” But whatever its name, its foundation is the home. What else is a nation but a patchwork of cities and towns; cities and towns a patchwork of neighborhoods; and neighborhoods a patchwork of homes? America”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“If we acknowledge that housing is a basic right of all Americans, then we must think differently about another right: the right to make as much money as possible by providing families with housing. And especially to profit excessively from the less fortunate.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City