25 Quotes by Chester Himes

It was the code of Harlem for one brother to help another lie to white cops.

Colored folks in Harlem didn’t want to get caught by the police whether they had done anything or not.

If you’re a police officer then I want to report that Chink Charlie pushed me out of the window to my death, but God placed the body of Christ on the ground to break my fall.” “It was a basket of bread,” the sergeant corrected. “The body of Christ,” Reverend Short maintained.

American violence is public life, it’s a public way of life, it became a form, a detective story form. So I should think that any number of black writers should go into the detective story form.

Don’t ever lean your whole weight on happiness, Jimmy. You fall too hard too hard when it gives away.

You bring the list to me at midnight. I’ll be waiting down by the Harlem River underneath the subway extension to the Polo Grounds in my cah, and I’ll pay you right then and there. It will be dark and deserted at that time of night and nobody’ll see you.” Barry.

For he reached the conclusion that everything he had ever seen, or had ever done, or had ever dreamed of doing would in the end betray him. That no matter what you had been, or ever hoped to be, a foot of greenish vomit hanging from your teeth would make you much the same as any other bastard.