Brook > Recent Status Updates

“From displaying the sacred evergreen, to lighting holiday lights, to making an effort to treat each other as equals during this dangerous time; we party, feast, and exchange gifts because I know if my roof collapses, my family might be seeking shelter with yours. And if your roof collapses under all of that snowy I must do the same for you.”

“Mama had kept most of her childhood stories locked in her eyes. Mama’s stories were unsuited for the ears of children—stories of evil without consequence and pain without cease—the unholy things that happen when God blinks. Or maybe sleeps.”

“This is the voice you hear right before you’re born, Sam thought. The voice that says, ‘Fight the good fight,’ before you are thrust into the unforgiving world.”

“I changed my prayer, and I said, ‘Lord, if you ain’t never going to change that man’s heart, kill him, Lord, and take him out of the way, so he won’t do no more mischief.’”

“You can leave the reservation, but your income level will still land you in a reservation house, won’t it? I’d heard my mom say this on the phone once, and it had stuck to the inside of my head in a way I knew I was going to be looking over at that part of the inside of my skull for the rest of my life, probably.”

“To sleepwalk is to be inhabited, yes, but not by something else, so much. What you’re inhabited by, what’s kicking one foot in front of the other, it’s yourself…what it tells you is that there’s a real you squirming down inside you, trying all through the day to pull up to the surface, look out. But it can only get that done when your defenses are down. When you’re sleeping.”

“This stupid world.

This world is such a riot of catastrophic events and chaotic upheavals—why would anyone ever choose to be here?

And why—
having found love at last within this lawless, barren tundra—
why would anyone ever leave?

“To toil within a household was to always be on duty, never free from reprisals. Life under the constant and watchful eye of a foul-tempered owner meant never-ending misery. The fields and the woods, alternatively, offered protection from constant monitoring, if nothing else. The outdoors, which she grew to love, became her sanctuary.”

“Born with three strikes against her—Minty [Harriet Tubman] was black, enslaved, and a girl—one day, her people would call her Moses.”

“In his heart he knew they were all connected, but this part of the journey, he would have to go alone.”

“Painting was [Beauford’s] defense against the voices in his head, an escape and a transformation of the social and psychological forces that dogged him, through light and shape and texture. But Baldwin, by contrast, as a budding writer, needed to confront and question these forces. There would be no escape, only attempts at interrogation, illumination, and even reconciliation.”

“…yet again a teacher had recognized his talent and stepped in to help guide him at a crucial juncture.”

“Before long, he became ‘Brother Baldwin,’ a revered child preacher at a number of Black Pentecostal churches in the neighborhood.”

Aw 🥹

“I believe that justice depends on people knowing the truth.”

DNF @ 40 pages in. Hate to say it, but reading this felt like I personally was doing the boring detective work of interviewing every member of the building, it was that tedious.

“She thought of all the things she and Harold had put off while waiting—what had they been waiting for?…They put money away for rainy days, but money couldn’t really do anything to save you from the rainiest day of all.”

“Part of her youthful affect was her hair, which she wore in a defiant antistyle, a long braid down her back…Tess blurted out her thoughts with a toddler’s impulsiveness, albeit with a much better vocabulary, one often studded with literary allusions and arcane facts…Her mind worked in a way that made sense to her, but almost no one else could follow her line of thought except her husband…”

“Mrs. Blossom reminded herself of her new rule: whatever was happening, there was not only a likely explanation, but a banal one.”

“Large people know a lot about shrinking. They are forced to do it all the time. Mrs. Blossom could never be small, but she knew ways to seem smaller. She collapsed in on herself, rolling up like a potato bug, which had been her father’s name for pill bugs. Only a potato bug who could keep walking even as she scrunched and compressed her body.”

“People were always anxious to ignore an older woman with a map. God forbid, she might come up to you and ask a question! It was counterintuitive, but sometimes making a spectacle of one’s self was the best way to deflect suspicion.”

“‘Promise me you’ll wear the sunglasses and the scarf every day. They go with everything. And people are nicer to you when they think you’re chic.’

‘That’s ridiculous. And *offensive,* frankly. Everyone deserves kindness.’

He shrugged. ‘Lots of true things are offensive. Doesn’t make them any less true.’”

“At some point I have to start trusting myself instead of everyone else.”

“It’s as if either everything is wrong or nothing is wrong and my brain can’t decide which, leaving me in limbo and going round and round in circles.”

“That’s Freddie all over. Thoughtless. Careless. Stupid. Always trying for an easy life. I used to like that about him when we met, his laissez-faire *everything will be alright* attitude. It was a great counterbalance to my need to have everything under control, but I realized a long time ago…that he just *hopes* everything will be alright because he’s lazy and has no self-control.”

“I climb the stairs…slowly and carefully…No running up and down with no thought of danger for me. Maybe never again. One serious brush with death brings every danger into sharp focus. It changes a person.”

“…the excitement trickled away to something close to regret as the reality of my situation sank in. I wanted the safety of the *known*. The comfort blanket of my familiar nest to lick my wounds in.”

“We love our parents not because they are perfect but because they persevere despite their imperfections. We all fall short of grace, but the beauty lives in the attempt.”

“The windshield exploded and shards of glass sliced into his forehead and scalp…The driver’s window joined the windshield in the realm of the past tense.”

😂

“This was the room of a grown man. A grown man who was a fragile assemblage of his worst impulses, but a grown man nonetheless.”

“Sometimes the man wearing the crown ain’t the man that’s supposed to be the king.”