1.

“There is no God, child. There’s religion but there’s no God of theirs. Their religion tells that we will get our reward in the end. However, it apparently doesn’t say anything about their punishment. But when we’re around them, we believe in God. Oh, Lawdy Lawd, we’s be believin’. Religion is just a controlling tool they employ and adhere to when convenient.”

“There must be something,” Virgil said.

“I”m sorry, Virgil. You might be right. There might be some higher power, children, but it’s not their white God. However, the more you talk about God and Jesus and heaven and hell, the better they feel.

The children said together, “And the better they feel, the safer we are.”

“February, translate that.”

“Da mo’ betta dey feels, da mo’ safer we be.”

2.

“I didn’t run. Running was something a slave could never do, unless, of course, he was running.”

3.

“I was as much scared as angry, but where does a slave put anger? We could be angry with one another; we were human. But the real source of our rage had to go without address, swallowed, repressed. They were going to rip my family apart and send me to New Orleans, where i would be even farther from freedom and would probably never see my family again.”

4.

“I really wanted to read. Though Huck was asleep, I could not chance his waking and discovering me with my face in an open book. Then I thought, How could he know that I was actually reading? I could simply claim to be staring dumbly at the letters and words, wondering what in the world they meant. How could he know? At that moment the power of reading made itself clear and real to me. If I could see the words, then no one could control them or what I got from them. They couldn’t know if I was merely seeing them of reading them, sounding them out or comprehending them. It was a completely private affair and completely free and, therefore, completely subversive.”

5.

“I had never read a novel, though I understand the concept of fiction. It wasn’t so unlike religion, or history, for that matter.”

6.

“So, that’s like stealin’, right? If’n I took a mule from the side of the road and I knowed who it belonged to, wouldn’t that be stealin’?”

“I ain’t a mule, Huck.” […]

“Ain’t I doin’ wrong, though?” Huck said. He was troubled. “How am I s’posed to know what good is?”

“Way I sees it is dis. If’n ya gots to hab a rule to tells ya wha’s good, if’n ya gots to hab good ‘splained to ya, den ya cain’t be good. If’n ya need sum kinda God to tella ya right from wrong, den you won’t never know.”

“But the law says…”

“Good ain’t got nuttin’ to do wif da law. Law says I’m a slave.”

7.

“I had already come to understand the tidiness of lies, the lesson learned from the stories told by white people seeking to justify my circumstance. I appreciated Voltaire’s notion of tolerance regarding religious difference and I understood, as absorbed as I was, that I was not interested in the content of the work, but it’s structure, the movement of it, the calling out of logical fallacies. And so, after these books, the Bible itself was the least interesting of all. I could not enter it, did not want to enter it, and then understood that I recognized it as a tool of my enemy. I chose the world enemy, and still do, as oppressor necessarily supposes a victim.

8.

“I could see that the business with the warring families had troubled him. Killing is hard to see up close. Especially for a child. To tell the truth, I hadn’t seen much killing myself, except that I lived with it daily, the threat, the promise of it. Seeing one lynching was to see ten. Seeing ten was to see a hundred, with that signature posture of death, the angle of the head, the crossing of the feet.”

9.

“Did you see their faces? They had to know them was lies, but they wanted to believe. What do you make of that?”

“Folks be funny lak dat. Dey takes the lies dey want and throws away the truths dat scare ’em.”

10.

“I had to ask myself and answer honestly, How much do I want to be free? And I couldn’t lose sight of my goal of freeing my family. What would freedom be without them?”

11.

“A slave was accused of stealing a damn pencil and they hanged him dead for it. They didn’t even find the pencil on him. What’s a slave need a pencil for? Can you believe it?”

“It’s hard to believe, all right.” I could feel the pencil in my pocket. I was taken then by the fact that I thought of it as the pencil and not my pencil.

“It’s a horrible world. White people try to tell us that everything will be just fine when we go to heaven. My question is, Will they be there? If so, I might make other arrangements.” Easter laughed.

12.

“White folks watch us work and forget how long we’re left alone in our heads. Working and waiting.”

I smiled. “If only they knew the danger in that.”

13.

“White people came out and lined the streets, smiling and laughing and clapping. I made eye contact with a couple of people in the crowd and the way they looked at me was different from any contact I had ever had with white people. They were open to me, but what I saw, looking into them, was hardly impressive. They sought to share this moment of mocking me, mocking darkies, laughing at the poor slaves, with joyful, spirited clapping and stomping. I looked at one woman who might have been intrigued by me or taken with me, the entertainer. I saw the surface of her, merely the outer shell, and realized that se was mere surface all the way to her core.”

14.

“We’re slaves, Norman. Where we are is where we are.”

“What’s that mean?”

I don’t know. Sounded better in my head.”

“I know what it means,” Sammy said. “We’re slaves. We’re not anywhere. Free person, he can be where he wants to be. The only place we can every be is in slavery.”

15.

“We should have left her where she was,” Norman said. “At least she’d be a live slave. Not just another dead runaway.”

I studied the lifeless body on the ground before me. “She was dead when I found her,” I said. “She’s just now died again, but this time she died free.”

16.

“They both called to me, one, and then the other. They were equidistant from me but not near each other. I felt I was in some poor philosopher’s example. Huck slipped under and came back up, slapping the water. Norman struggled with his plank. I was frozen there, moving in neither direction, but needing to choose one.

The air was filled with screams, shouts, cries, but I could hear only two sounds clearly, two voices calling my name.”

17.

“Why did you save me and not him,” Huck asked.

“I jest did, s’all. I couldn’ save you boff.”

“Why me, Jim?”

Maybe because of I was tired of the slave voice. Maybe because I hated myself for having lost my friend. Maybe because the lie was burning through me. Because of all those reasons, I said, “Because, Huck, and I hope you hear this without thinking I’m crazy or joking, you are my son.”

18.

“I couldn’t stop seeing Norman’s eyes, his bobbing face, his waving hand as he went under. He had trusted me. Now he was dead. All of those dead white faces, and none of them mattered a note to me, but Norman’s, with skin just like theirs, was the world.”

19.

“Belief has nothing to do with truth. Believe what you like. Believe I’m lying and move through the world as a white boy. Believe I’m telling the truth and move through the world as a white boy anyway. Either way, no difference.” I looked at the boy’s face and I could see that he had feelings for me and that was the root of his anger. He had always felt affection for me, if not actual love. He had always looked to me for protection, even when thought he was trying to protect me.

“Liar”, he cried.

I took it.”

20.

“I had heard of an underground railroad. I wanted it to be real, even if I could have no truck with it. Some people were finding a way north—that was what I, so many of us, needed to believe. It pained me to think that without a white person with me, without a white looking face, I could not travel safely through the light of the world, but was relegated to the dense woods. Without someone white to claim me as property, there was no justification for my presence, perhaps for my existence.”

21.

“Huck showed the excitement of a boy at the sight of our catch. I was reminded that he was just that, a boy. He could have gone through life without the knowledge I had given him and he would have been no worse off for it. But I understood at that moment that I had shared the truth with him for myself. I needed for him to have a choice.”

22.

“It’s actually a simple question, Hopkins. Which would frighten you more? A slave who is crazy or a slave who is sane and sees you clearly?”

23.

“I had exacted revenge. But for whom? For one act, or many? Against one man, many men or the world? I wondered if I should feel guilty. Should I have felt some pride in my action? Had I done a brave thing? Had I done an evil thing? Was it evil to kill evil? The truth was I didn’t care. It was this apathy that left me wondering about myself—not wondering why I didn’t feel anything or whether I was incapable of feeling, but wondering what else I was capable of doing. It was not an altogether bad feeling.”

24.

“I had never seen a white man filled with such fear. The remarkable truth, however, was that it was not the pistol, but my language, the fact that I didn’t conform to his expectations, that I could read, that had so disturbed and frightened him.”

25.

“My name is James. I’m going to get my family. You can come with me or can you stay here. You can come and try freedom or you can stay here. You can die with me trying to find freedom “or you can stay here and be dead anyway. My name is James.”