Bernice L. McFadden Quotes

“Listen, if you choose to believe nothing else that transpires here, believe this: your body does not have a soul; your soul has a body, and souls never, ever die.”

— Bernice L. McFadden

“'Sugar, aint you ever had no good time?' she said with a bit of sadness in her voice.
'What you mean?' Sugar said, ...
'Seems to me that I ain't never see you look up from whatever you were doing and just smile.'
'Just smile? Smile at what? At who?'
'Smile into the air, girl!' she said and waved her arm through the air ... you better start, 'cause time is running and a life without good times ain't a life worth having.”

— Bernice L. McFadden

“In 1922 everything changed again. The Eskimo pie was invented; James Joyce's Ulysses was printed in Paris; snow fell on Mauna Loa, Hawaii; Babe Ruth signed a three-year contract with the New York Yankees; Eugene O'Neill was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama; Frederick Douglass's home was dedicated as a national shrine; former heavyweight champion of the world Jack Johnson invented the wrench ...”

— Bernice L. McFadden

“Don't you know sugar is brown first? White folks couldn't stand the fact that something so sweet shared the same color as the people who cut the cane, slopped the hogs and picked the cotton. So they bleached it to resemble them, and now they done gone and fooled everybody. You included.”

— Bernice L. McFadden

“Women were always ready to give themselves over for love, when all the men really had to offer them was the word and not the meaning behind it.”

— Bernice L. McFadden

“J.W. and Roy didn't just snatch the childhood away from Emmett; they stole it from every single black child in Mississippi.”

— Bernice L. McFadden

“When things were bad, time had a habit of taking its time to pass, making sure you experienced every painful moment. When things were good and contentment abundant, time moved like the wind, hurrying precious moments along and forcing things that normally require nurturing to grow and forge quickly.”

— Bernice L. McFadden

“But grief let loose from a woman who lost a child-that was the worst type of grief of all.”

— Bernice L. McFadden

“I write to breath life back into memory to remind African-Americans of our rich and textured history. I also see myself as a "root," and for me the "fierce winds" include the marginalization-the downright segregation-of literature written by people of color.”

— Bernice L. McFadden

“The men know that black women are women at the very least; magical at their zenith and biblical at the core, being with a black woman was as sacred as dousing oneself in holy water. That”

— Bernice L. McFadden

“Baby, everybody got their own reasons for doing things they do in life. It don't matter what her reason was at the time, what matters is she come back for you, and even though you might think it's too late, it ain't never too late where a mother and her child is concerned.”

— Bernice L. McFadden

“Writing kept her sane. Kept her form spinning out of control. Kept her tongue still whenever some white person spoke down to her. She had to write, it was the only thing that was completely hers, that she could look forward to at the end of her long day.”

— Bernice L. McFadden

“We ace boon coons forever.”

— Bernice L. McFadden

“She would watch with glee as Rain was relegated to standing in her shoes; Easter hoped to God they pinched.”

— Bernice L. McFadden

“The next day the stock market crashed. Hemmingway didn't quite understand what
it all meant, but from the way the white people in town were running around like
chickens without heads, she took it as an omen.”

— Bernice L. McFadden

“She swung like a pendulum, ticking away the seconds until she would be dead.”

— Bernice L. McFadden

The people in his Harlem did not speak, they sang their way through conversations and disagreements,

— Bernice L. McFadden

Joe lulls the man into the afterlife, places his head gently on the ground, closes the lids over his empty eyes, retrieves his gun and continues to fight for a freedom he would never be fully entitled to.

— Bernice L. McFadden

“Sugar ain't spoiled, she just a little bruised, is all. Bruises can heal and fade away to nothing.”

— Bernice L. McFadden

“Over time her inhibitions took shelter in the corner of the room and Easter allowed the music to swallow her,”

— Bernice L. McFadden

“What kinda women you is? You gonna let a man lay up on another woman in your own house and not do nothing about it?”

— Bernice L. McFadden

You see, no one ever told her to keep her legs closed and crossed at the ankles. No one ever said: "Save it for the one you love" or "Good girls say no.

— Bernice L. McFadden

“That's who we were, wartorn meadows on the verge of new growth.”

— Bernice L. McFadden

“Keeping her man well fed and fucked are number one priorities that she can't slack on because you can never know when a woman dressed to the nines with a blond wig, long legs and a high fat ass that should have been equal to you in almost every way may decide to hop on the first southbound Greyhound and end up looking at you through whispering letters on a dusty storefront window.”

— Bernice L. McFadden

“For many years, Tass's life was like an echo.”

— Bernice L. McFadden

“I write to breathe life back into memory.”

— Bernice L. McFadden

Only the Strong is a lushly atmospheric and passionately written piece of work, bursting with colorful characters that shine on every page.

— Bernice L. McFadden