Jeff Hobbs Quotes

#1. to live on Pierson Street, just two blocks north of

Jeff Hobbs

#2. [Flowy]'d undertaken this mainly because he'd known that going to public school, with girls, would sentence him to fatherhood by age sixteen, and he wanted to evade that pattern, one from which he himself had been born.

Jeff Hobbs

#3. What had happened wasn't supposed to have happened and yet, they still rendered the predictable media spin of potential squandered, the gift of education sacrificed to the allure of thug life, etc. Not only simplistic, but also offensively so.

Jeff Hobbs

#4. He wanted to instill that sociability in his son; he believed that being curious about people was one of the few crucial life skills that could be fully nurtured in a place like East Orange.

Jeff Hobbs

#5. that Rob, who had turned seven two months

Jeff Hobbs

#6. A poetry professor had once defined romance to me as "bringing two people together when every force in the universe is working to keep them apart.

Jeff Hobbs

#7. On that night he made clear to his secret society that the fundamental conflict of his life was founded on precisely that belief: the white establishment would always keep the common black man down in order to cover their own asses.

Jeff Hobbs

#8. Like a bird handled by humans whose flock would not accept it back, Rob now wore the unwashable scent of the Ivy League.

Jeff Hobbs

#9. He talked about what he believed defined a Real Man: someone who had honor, curiosity, respect for women, and took responsibility for his people.

Jeff Hobbs

#10. At Yale, most everyone (except Oswaldo Gutierrez) refrained from telling Rob what to do, because of the way he'd grown up in Newark. In Newark, most everyone (except Oswaldo Gutierrez) refrained from telling Rob what to do, because of the way he'd gone to Yale.

Jeff Hobbs

#11. It's like you can't have a real conversation with anyone.

Jeff Hobbs

#12. men and women who'd constantly filed through our common room, wearing hoodies and piercings - uniform in their aversion to uniformity - to

Jeff Hobbs

#13. orders at home. Over the following

Jeff Hobbs

#14. The word "fronting" was important to Rob. A coward who acted tough was fronting. A nerd who acted dumb was fronting. A rich kid who acted poor was fronting. Rob found the instinct very offensive, and in college he saw it all around.

Jeff Hobbs

#15. Our collective information regarding his death was still limited, which brought forward the sadder fact that, at the end of it all, none of us had actually known Rob as well as we thought we did, as well as we should have, as well as - with just a little more effort - we could have.

Jeff Hobbs

#16. If you want to, and you don't, then that's on you.

Jeff Hobbs

#17. Look, anything you do, if it isn't hard, it isn't doing anything for you. So you're better off not doing it. Use your time somewhere else.

Jeff Hobbs

#18. and it's like nothing matters, not even time, and for a couple hours I can just be.

Jeff Hobbs

#19. But words mattered, more so in Newark than many other places. In a world where income and possessions were limited, words represented dignity, pride, self-worth.

Jeff Hobbs

#20. He had a natural curiosity about the stories of those around him paired with a brain that was quick to draw insights from within each of these stories.

Jeff Hobbs

#21. Oswaldo was flummoxed by the fact that his friend could be so quiet, almost embarrassed, about his academic acumen, yet so damn loud and proud of his status as a premier campus drug dealer.

"I've never met anyone so smart but so fucking dumb," he told Rob.

Jeff Hobbs

#22. the music player.

Jeff Hobbs

#23. Rob's small room on the second floor of the Chapman Street house, a three-shelf bookcase was packed with black-and-white composition books, the front and back of each page filled with single-spaced notes from various classes. Tavarus thought, Damn, this is how you go places.

Jeff Hobbs

#24. In East Orange, initiations were completed by murdering someone, for no other reason than to prove to a tremendously cold, tremendously tight brotherhood that you possessed the hardness required to watch their backs.

Jeff Hobbs