Deathless Divide Quotes

“...we know the curse that has been laid upon us--not the curse of bondage, but rather the curse of neglect. This country does not see, nor seek to remedy, the suffering of the Negro, and we are taxed to bear the wrath of white inadequacy.”
― Justina Ireland, Deathless Divide

“I smile tightly, but say nothing. He is trying to protect me, in the simple way men are always trying to protect women: by stealing away their freedom.”
― Justina Ireland, Deathless Divide

“You're a heartbreaker, Katherine Devereaux."

"That has nothing to do with me and everything to do with them," I say, blowing on my coffee before sipping it. There's chicory in the brew and I drink it appreciatively while we walk. "I have already had to tell more than one of them that I am not interested in courtship, thinking about courtship, hearing about courtship, or talking about the possibility of courtship. What is it with men thinking every woman they meet must be half in love with them?”
― Justina Ireland, Deathless Divide

“He is trying to protect me, in the simple way men are always trying to protect women: by stealing away their freedom.”
― Justina Ireland, Deathless Divide

“This world may hate the Negro, but that is who I am. I do not care about the story my skin tells. I am a colored woman, and I will not let them make me hate myself.”
― Justina Ireland, Deathless Divide

“The only goal of this world is to stay in it as long as possible. And no one gets to judge how a body does that, especially when the alternative is being eaten.”
― Justina Ireland, Deathless Divide

“The only goal of this world is to stay in it as long as possible. And no one gets to judge how a body does that, especially when the alternative is being eaten.”
― Justina Ireland, Deathless Divide

“Pray tell me, sir, how does one make another person illegal? That does not sound very Christian.”
― Justina Ireland, Deathless Divide

“Questioning the truth of things doesn’t change them.”
― Justina Ireland, Deathless Divide

“The mayor talks like we are old friends, and I lean back on my bunk, because I learned long ago that you should never trust a man who treats you like a longtime friend.”
― Justina Ireland, Deathless Divide

“Your father is sentencing this whole town to death,” I mutter. “There ain’t any kind of inoculation against fear and false confidence.”
― Justina Ireland, Deathless Divide

“You help as much as you can—but no more. You don’t think those founding fathers wrote all those pretty words about independence just to help the poor, do you? The books are right there in the library, Jane. They did it because they didn’t want to pay taxes, to have some king tell them the price of tea. And for that, they went to war, and hundreds of people died. If that ain’t capitalism, I don’t know what is.”
― Justina Ireland, Deathless Divide

“People in the West will tell you it’s the Indian you need to fear, but no Indian has ever been half so vicious as the white man. And the dead? Well, they took their cues from the best.”
― Justina Ireland, Deathless Divide

“is so terribly wrong that even in a city with strong walls and its back against the ocean, where people from halfway around the world can live in luxury, there are still people struggling.”
― Justina Ireland, Deathless Divide

“Now, let me be clear that I do not hold truck with a lot of that Bible nonsense, and I ain’t sure why any kind of benevolent God would let mankind carry on the way it’s wont to do. But Katherine believes, and so I pray for her because she cannot do it for herself.”
― Justina Ireland, Deathless Divide

“Sometimes the people we love fiercest leave the world like a whisper.”
― Justina Ireland, Deathless Divide

“But when I am dressed and looking my best, I feel like I actually have power over something. And even the smallest feeling of security is a comfort in a brutal, unforgiving world.”
― Justina Ireland, Deathless Divide

“I scowl at her. Funny how the right way for white folks always ends up with someone else taking the blame.”
― Justina Ireland, Deathless Divide

“I love my momma, and I surely trust her more than I do any founding fathers I’ve never met. But I have to believe there’s more to life than just surviving.”
― Justina Ireland, Deathless Divide

“it makes me wonder: How can we make the world a better place if we are always at odds with one another for every single kind of reason under the sun?”
― Justina Ireland, Deathless Divide

“it is so terribly wrong that even in a city with strong walls and its back against the ocean, where people from halfway around the world can live in luxury, there are still people struggling. The stories I had heard of California painted it as some vast promised land, and it is easy to see that there is coin aplenty here. But there is also poverty, and it strikes me once again that it is not simply the undead that make survival a constant battle.”
― Justina Ireland, Deathless Divide

“I think about the months I spent back in Summerland, laughing to hide my discomfort, pretending that I shared the same ideas about the world as those fine white families, and the way I felt as though a very important part of me was slowly dying, a brilliant rose robbed of light and sustenance.”
― Justina Ireland, Deathless Divide

“The West is full of girls like me, victims of circumstance, or poor choices, or good old-fashioned bad luck. We harden into diamonds under the pressure, keeping our chins up and soldiering on. It’s one of the things I love about this wild land. In the East, the dead could get you just as surely as pneumonia or yellow fever—quick, quiet, hard deaths. But in California it would be bears or bobcats or maybe a claim jumper, all noisy, violent ways to go. California was a wild land full of strong, ferocious people, and I liked that.”
― Justina Ireland, Deathless Divide

“I know this is a sin, but there are few things I enjoy more than being right. I have been praying to the Lord to be a bit more humble. He just has not seen fit to show me the way as of yet.”
― Justina Ireland, Deathless Divide

“All the money in the world can not make a colored person worthy to some folks.”
― Justina Ireland, Deathless Divide

“After it was done, Miss Anderson made some grand pronouncement, as despots are prone to do, and I knelt there in the dirt without a single regret, because that corn bread was delicious.”
― Justina Ireland, Deathless Divide

“Some of them Indians kept slaves the same as everyone else,” Jackson says, his words clipped. “Ain’t a single body in this entire cursed country that didn’t have a hand in trying to own the African.”
― Justina Ireland, Deathless Divide

“Nothing good ever comes of withholding the truth.”
― Justina Ireland, Deathless Divide

“And even the smallest feeling of security is a comfort in a brutal, unforgiving world.”
― Justina Ireland, Deathless Divide

“Sometimes, when the world doesn’t make sense, it’s easier to pretend like there are other forces at work. But there ain’t. That’s just life.”
― Justina Ireland, Deathless Divide