Julius Lester Quotes

“How can I love you if I don't know what hurts you?”

— Julius Lester

“History is not just facts and events. History is also a pain in the heart and we repeat history until we are able to make another's pain in the heart our own.”

— Julius Lester

“Silence was not the absence of sound but was itself a sound that could be loud or soft, soothing or disturbing, complex or simple.”

— Julius Lester

“I'm tired of thinking and I'm really tired of Feeling.
-Jenna Richards”

— Julius Lester

“But I want you around even when I don't need you.
-Jeremy Richards”

— Julius Lester

“We remember with our emotions. The things that were important in our emotional life, that's what we remember.”

— Julius Lester

“Just because she's dead it doesn't mean I stopped loving her or that she stopped loving me. It's just her body that left. The love didn't.
-Jenna Richards”

— Julius Lester

“It ain't how long you know somebody that means anything. It's what that person mean to you in your heart.”

— Julius Lester

“If I canot know your name, may I light a lamp so I can see your face?'
If you sould ever see my face, you will lose me forever.'
Why?' Psyche wanted to know. 'Are you ugly? Are you afraid I won't love you if I see your face?'
Perhaps I am afraid that if you see my face, it will be THAT that you will love and not me.'
I understand, believe me. I know what that feels like.”

— Julius Lester

“Being a failure at living your own life as best as you can is better than being a success living the life somebody else says you should live.”

— Julius Lester

“Goodness was not a trait you acquired; it was a value you practiced when you were on the verge of doing evil.”

— Julius Lester

“Some wounds go so deep that you don't even feel them until months, maybe years, later.”

— Julius Lester

“But there are times when a tree can no longer withstand the pain inflicted on it, and the wind will take pity on that tree and topple it over in a mighty storm. All the other trees who witnessed the evil look down upon the fallen tree with envy. They pray for the day when a wind will end their suffering. I pray for the day when God will end mine.”

— Julius Lester

Dying ain't important. Everyone does that. What's important is how well you do your living.

— Julius Lester

“There was an end to weeping. Mourning, however, ebbed and surged but never ceased flowing.”

— Julius Lester

“What would they do if I said I hurt so much I feel like I want to die?
-Jeremy Richards”

— Julius Lester

I write because the lives of all of us are stories. If enough of those stories are told, then perhaps we will begin to see that our lives are the same story. The differences are merely in the details.

— Julius Lester

“He took the box but did not avail himself of a tissue. She understood. Sometimes it was comforting to feel the wetness of grief's tears on your face.”

— Julius Lester

To give good hugs you have to have some soft places.
-Jeremy Richards

— Julius Lester

Books, and especially fiction, do not proceed from ideas. They are born from feelings

— Julius Lester

While the subject matter is lynching, on a deeper level, this novel is about identity. Whom and what we identify ourselves with determines our characters, determines who we are, and what we do.

— Julius Lester

The racial divides in the United States will not be overcome until lynchings of all kinds are as painful to nonblacks as they are to blacks, until each of us become guardians of the sufferings history has bequeathed us.

— Julius Lester

“Love happened. Love came to show you that you could be more than you could ever imagine, because love forced you out of the narrows of yourself and thrust you into a vastness that stretched from one end of time to the other. Nothing mattered except being in the presence of love, the greatest beauty of all.”

— Julius Lester

“Stagolee was, undoubtedly and without question, the baddest nigger that ever lived. Stagolee was so bad that the flies wouldn't even fly around his head in the summertime, and snow wouldn't fall on his house in the winter. He was bad, jim.”

— Julius Lester

“The young accept the extraordinary as normal because they do not compare their lives with those of others when everyone is like them.”

— Julius Lester

“The object of learning was not to build a better mousetrap but to ask a better question.”

— Julius Lester

“Often, the human animal dresses terror in rage, and expresses both in a way unlike either.”

— Julius Lester

Part of the mind's job was to cast doubt on what the heart knew to be true, and the heart, because it had no words, often lost the argument

— Julius Lester

“To write and not tell the truth? That would be death for any writer. But more, it would be death to the imagination. And if the imagination dies, what would happen to the souls of children?”

— Julius Lester

“Its hardness and solidity had been an odd kind of comfort. Do not wish for anything. Be and endure. The Old African had learned that enduring was power too, and just as he had been drawn to the boulder, so the slaves, after a while, were drawn to him.”

— Julius Lester

“A good teacher is one who helps you become who you feel yourself to be. A good teacher is also one who says something that you won't understand until 10 years later.”

— Julius Lester

The failure of modern living is the failure of the imagination ... Literature is the royal road that enables us to enter the realm of the imagination.

— Julius Lester

“Faith is not something that one has; faith is something that one practices at the very moment in your life when you really don't believe anything, and you're in the worst kind of despair.”

— Julius Lester

“Freeform radio is an art form. The airwaves are the empty canvas, the producer is the artist, and the sound is the paint.”

— Julius Lester

When I read students' attempts at creative writing it is obvious immediately that most of them have not read much or widely. The aspiring writer must read everything he or she can to appreciate the myriad ways words are used and to what effect.

— Julius Lester

Each of us is comprised of stories, stories not only about ourselves but stories about ancestors we never knew and people we've never met. We have stories we love to tell and stories we have never told anyone. The extent to which others know us is determined by the stories we choose to share. We extend a deep trust to someone when we say, "I'm going to tell you something I've never told anyone." Sharing stories creates trust because through stories we come to a recognition of how much we have in common.

— Julius Lester