Jonathan Odell Quotes

#1. Calming ain't curing, is it, girl?

Jonathan Odell

#2. Creation is filled with soul-sick folks, colored and white, never knowing where they belong. They tangle everybody else up in their grief.

Jonathan Odell

#3. No, now the domestic market is full up with other planters' troublesome slaves. Our only salvation is to scientifically breed a stable order of docile Negro. I've come up with three tenets: Isolation. Religion. Family...." Master Ben

Jonathan Odell

#4. That place I'm talking about ain't nothing but a bloody slit in this world of His. But everybody wants to rule over it. It ain't for the white man to rule. Ain't for any man to rule.

Jonathan Odell

#5. Calming ain't curing, is it, girl?" the woman asked aloud. "Keeping you hushed might keep me out of jail, but sure as the world, calming ain't curing.

Jonathan Odell

#6. That's the way it is with God, don't you reckon? He always around somewheres, if you can see His face or not. He's out there watching through the dark. Sometimes that's got to be enough, I suppose. Knowing He sees us even if we can't see Him back." -- Levi Snow

Jonathan Odell

#7. You don't have no idea who you are. And if you don't know who you are," Polly continued, "you can't know nothing about where you beee-long.

Jonathan Odell

#8. They all watched silently as she walked toward her cabin, but when she got to the doorway she stopped and turned around. She stood for a moment with her chin lifted and her eyes closed. What on earth was she doing? Granada wondered.

Jonathan Odell

#9. Sometiimes when you look at a person all you see is the tangle and you miss the weave

Jonathan Odell

#10. When you quilting up a life, you sometimes got to start with any piece you can get your hands on.

Jonathan Odell

#11. Look up, Granada. Look to your people. We as beautiful and as plentiful as them stars knitted together in heaven. We just forgot. Somebody's got to remember for us all.

Jonathan Odell

#12. When God wants to punish us, he gives us just ourselves to care for.

Jonathan Odell

#13. No one had ever told her about the ingredients of life, only of biscuits.

Jonathan Odell

#14. Granada had never been on the water before and she marveled at how the creek was a living thing with a will of its own, like an untamed horse challenging her to ride upon its back.

Jonathan Odell

#15. When you got a question," Polly said before Granada could ask, "first be silent. Look around you. Let creation speak the truth to you." She

Jonathan Odell

#16. A flapping tongue puts out the light of wisdom."~Polly Shine

Jonathan Odell

#17. Just remember this, girl, the water you hate is the water that's going to drown you.

Jonathan Odell

#18. Master says the cholera is not a quality disease. The highborn don't come down with such.

Jonathan Odell

#19. When I look up, there are women as far as I can see, standing in the river one behind the other, generations going back to the beginning time, from the very womb of God.

Jonathan Odell

#20. You're soul sick is what you are," Polly said. "And you can stomp your little footsie all you want to, but you ain't going to get well until you remember. And you can't remember until you learn to see.

Jonathan Odell