Quotes by Walter Mosley

That’s how Ptolemy imagined the disposition of his memories, his thoughts: they were still his, still in the range of his thinking, but they were, many and most of them, locked on the other side a closed door that he’s lost the key for. So his memory became like secrets held away from his own mind. But these secrets were noisy things; they babbled and muttered behind the door, and so if he listened closely he might catch a snatch of something he once knew well.

There are as many kinds of love as there are flowers and bugs put together but men and women and their needs are all the same.

Kit [Carson Kitteridge] watched me for a few moments before saying, That was some impressive killing you did. Naked too.I hope I didnt embarrass Office Palmer.She said that after all she heard about you she thought your johnson would be bigger.Tell her that the air conditioner was on.

I wondered if I could just drop the role I carried like a mantle of a dethroned prince.

The girl was cinnamon colored in the way of Native America after it had been raped by Europe.

I don’t give a fuck what you’re trying to do or what you want. I’d send your ass away if you were a white man with a red ribbon tied around your dick.

Science fiction [is] the kind of writing that prepares us for the necessary mutations brought about in society from an ever changing technological world and as a result. The mainstream hasn’t excluded SF; the mainstream has excluded itself. No one told Jules Verne he was a science fiction writer, but he invented the 20th century.

We will be one step down from the Creator, she said, her olive-hued face tightening into an expression that she considered dramatic. Imagining a world and then making it.

He made me question what was, when for a whole lifetime up till that moment, I accepted the world’s excuses.

It was mid-November 2008. There were pirates taking ships with impunity in African waters, terrorists punching holes in Indian security, China sinking towards depression because Americans were afraid to buy cheap goods for Christmas, and the richest nation in the history of the world was talking about how to keep a budget.

The law, he continued, is made by the rich people so that the poor people cant get ahead...

Its not that racism doesnt exist. Lots of people in New York, and elsewhere, hate because of color and gender, religion and national origin. Its just that I rarely worry about those things because theres a real world underneath all that nonsense; a world that demands my attention almost every second of the day. Racism is a luxury in a world where resources are scarce, where economic competition is an armed sport, in a world where even the atmosphere is plotting against you. In an arena like that racism is more of a halftime entertainment, a favorite sitcom when the day is done.

We got a call from across the street that a black woman had broken into this house.”“And you were going to arrest her without even knocking on the door?”“We had to secure her first. Um. Are you okay, ma’am?”“Of course I am. Don’t you see me?”“Because we have her in custody. You don’t have to be afraid.”“I’m not afraid of my daughter-in-law, Mrs. Theon Pinkney. She’s the one who should be afraid. Four big men grabbing her and putting her in chains. What’s wrong with you?”The police stood there, slightly confused. I could see that they felt justified, even righteous, for grabbing me in Marcia’s driveway. There was no question in their minds that I was a criminal and that they were on the side of the Law.Marcia glanced at me then. We’d spent hours together but it was as if she hadn’t really gotten a good look at me until seeing the tableau in her driveway.

My father always taught by telling stories about his experiences. His lessons were about morality and art and what insects and birds and human beings had in common. He told me what it meant to be a man and to be a Black man. He taught me about love and responsibility, about beauty, and how to make gumbo.

“We are not trapped or locked up in these bones. No, no. We are free to change. And love changes us. And if we can love one another, we can break open the sky.”

“It hurts when theyre gone. And it doesnt matter if its slow or fast, whether its a long drawn-out disease or an unexpected accident. When theyre gone the world turns upside down and youre left holding on, trying not to fall off.”