36 Quotes by Lawrence Hill

I had learned that there were times when fighting was impossible, when the best thing to do was to wait and to learn.

Some say that I was once uncommonly beautiful, but I wouldn’t wish beauty on any woman who has not her own freedom, and who chooses not the hands that claim her.

I remember wondering, within a year or two of taking my first my first steps, why only men sat to drink tea and converse, and why women were always busy. I reasoned that men were weak and needed rest.

For this child of mine, home would be me. I would be home. I would be everything for this child until we went home together.

Redemption is invented by the sinner.

I concluded that no place in the world was entirely safe for an African, and that for many of us, survival depended on perpetual migration.

Reading felt like a daytime dream in a secret land. Nobody but I knew how to get there, and nobody but I owned that place.

She asked why I was so black. I asked why she was so white. She said she was born that way. Same here, I replied.

Never have I met a person doing terrible things who would meet my own eyes peacefully. To gaze into another person’s face is to do two things: to recognize their humanity, and to assert your own.