14 Quotes by Joe Okonkwo

A sidewalk café. Coffee. Beignets. A favorite book of poems, the pages edged in gilt. A serenading band. Wistful jazz. Happy jazz. Glo. Gin. A poem dancing off the nib of his pen. The sun and moon holding hands in the sky. A tickle of champagne. A stroke of reefer.

Having nothing to lose liberates.

He so often felt as though he hailed from a different species, not quite human. He’d always been different, had never fit. Negroes looked at him askance, questioning his credentials as a Negro man. Whites did, too. For both groups, he wasn’t Negro enough.

The light and the heat tantalize, but stray too close and face obliteration.

Forgiveness was like charity: You could dispense it, or not. And, as with charity, the one dispensing held the power.