joy’s Reviews > If Beale Street Could Talk > Status Update

“and i remember that at that moment everything stood still. the sun didn't move and the earth didn't move, the sky stared down, waiting, and i put my hand on my heart to make it start beating again.” 194

“she watched me for a moment, then she went away again. i watched the sky. it was as though it had something to say to me. i was in some strange place, alone. everything was still.” 196

“he smiles, and stands… looking me dead in the eye. something travels from him to me, it is love and courage. yes. yes. we are going to make it, somehow. somehow. i stand, and smile... he turns into the inferno. i walk toward the sahara.” 184

“people always know the outside better than they know the inside.” 184

“yet, when he grinned, i saw, all over again, my lover, as though for the first time.” 193

“every day, when he sees my face, he knows, again, that i love him—and God knows i do, more and more, deeper and deeper, with every hour… he is not alone; we are not alone. “ 162

“the mind is like an object that picks up dust. the object doesn't know, any more then the mind does, why what clings to it clings. but once whatever it is lights on you, it doesn't go away” 171

“i had crossed my river. now, we were one.” 144

“despair can make one monstrous, but it can also make one noble” 152

“he is young, very, very young, but also very old; but not old in the way that she had expected him to be. she had expected the age of corruption. she is confronting the age of sorrow. she is confronting torment.” 154

“when two people love each other… everything that happens between them has something of a sacramental air… i know of no greater torment, no more resounding void—when your lover has gone! but tonight, with our vows so mysteriously menaced, and with both of us, though from different angles, placed before this fact, we were more profoundly together than we had ever been before.” 143

"i know i can't help you very much right now-God knows what i wouldn't give if i could. but i know about suffering; if that helps. i know that it ends. i ain't going to tell you no lies, like it always ends for the better. sometimes it ends for the worse. you can suffer so bad that you can be driven to a place where you can't ever suffer again: and that's worse." 112

“yet longs to be free to confront his life; is terrified at the same time of what that life may bring, is terrified of freedom; and is struggling in a trap. and fonny, who is younger, struggles now to be older, in order to help his friend toward his deliverance. didn't my Lord deliver daniel? and why not every man? the song is old, the question unanswered.” 106

“in complete silence, without moving a muscle, we are laughing with each other… we are together somewhere where no one can reach us, touch us, joined. we are happy… for daniel… sensing that something wonderful has happened to us, which means that wonderful things happen, and that maybe something wonderful will happen to him. It's wonderful, anyway, to be able to help a person to have that feeling.” 105

“neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind. and i could not be indifferent to daniel because i realized, from fonny's face, how marvelous it was for him to have scooped up, miraculously, from the swamp waters of his past, a friend.” 99

“i got two things in my life, man—i got my wood and stone and i got tish. if i lose them, i’m lost. i know that.” 101

“i smiled, and he smiled, and something really human happened between us, for the first time.” 97

“fonny is overjoyed; and the truth is that i recognize daniel by the light in fonny's eyes. for, it is not so much that time has not improved him: i can see to what extent he has been beaten. this is not because i am perceptive, but because i am in love with fonny.” 99