Percival Everett

The only ones who suffer when they are made to feel inferior is us.

Religion is just a controlling tool they employ and adhere to when convenient.

“He’s going to get drunk now, not so much because he can, but because we can’t,”

“Sad as that may be, I’m still a slave and I can’t help him at all.”

I was as much scared as angry, but where does a slave put anger? We could be angry with one another; we were human. But the real source of our rage had to go without address, swallowed, repressed.

How strange a world, how strange an existence, that one’s equal must argue for one’s equality, that one’s equal must hold a station that allows airing of that argument, that one cannot make that argument for oneself, that premises of said argument must be vetted by those equals who do not agree.

If they can have meaning, then life can have meaning, then I can have meaning.

I admired that, was envious of it, to tell the truth, to be able to feel that in a world without fear of being hanged to death, or worse.

Story idea—a man marries a woman whose name is the same as that of his first wife. One night while making love he says her name and the woman accuses him of calling out the name of his first wife. Of course he in fact has called out the name of his first wife, but also he has called out his present wife’s name. He tells her that he was not thinking of his first wife, but she says she knows what she heard.