18 Quotes by George Lamming

If you ask him for a shilling, or two or three shillings, he'll give freely freely, but if he know that he got to spend a few hundred dollars, which is no more than three shillings compare to what he got, boys, he will cry buckets of tears.

The darkness brought a strange kind of release, and you wished secretly in your heart that darkness would descend on the whole earth so that you could get a chance to see how much energy there was stored in your little self. You could get a chance to leave the cage. You would be free.

They had the unlettered man's respect for the written word. There was something formidable, even sacred, about a book. Only truth, it seemed, could be put in print.

Whatever was said or done, I knew what I wanted; and that was to be a boy among the boys.

They watched each other at times as a cat would watch a mouse, playfully but seriously. The inspector smiled and the teacher smiled back, and the cat in each smiled too.

It was a big thing to be a king. It meant that you were getting the feeling that you lived in a big room all by yourself where no one could see you and you were your own man. Free and alone.

The newspaper was always behind the news, not in front. You shouldn't ever go to the papers for information. They usually printed what they thought people wanted to see, and they had no explanation to give. It wasn't the king they saw. That wasn't the king at all. It was the king's shadow.

He had been seen by another. He had become a part of the other's world, and therefore no longer in complete control of his own. The eye was another kind of cage. When it saw you the lid came down, and you were trapped.

Language was a kind of passport. You could go where you like if you had a clean record. p.155