28 Quotes by Justina Ireland

My momma always said the best way to get what you want from people is to give them what they think they want. They expected me to be stupid, so I used that to our advantage.

Sometimes you have to live down to people's expectations, Kate. If you can do that, you'll get much further in life.

Why are all pretty boys insane?

Wherever did they find you?""At the junction of hard luck and bad times," I answer. It's something that my momma says.

But that's the way life goes most of the time: the thing you least count on comes along and ruins everything else you got planned.

The easiest lie to tell is the one that people want to believe.

Momma said that's why you had to be wary. "Janie, you mark my words: You be careful who you trust. You never know when the man you married is gonna turn around and try to take a nibble out of your neck.

And I suppose I might have grown up better, might have become a proper house girl or even taken Aunt Aggie's place as House Negro. I might have been a good girl if it had been in the cards. But all of that was dashed to hell two days after I was born, when the dead rose up and started to walk on a battlefield in a small town in Pennsylvania called Gettysburg.

So don't let nobody tell you any different about the old days. Life is hard now, nothing but suffering, but some kinds of suffering is easier to bear than others.