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Lovely War

Book by Julie Berry · 25 quotes · Love, War, Black Lives Matter

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Lovely War Quotes

“There was a time, in their flat, when the position of the piano meant that while James... saw only the left side of her face. She looked just like the girl he'd first seen at the parish dance in Poplar. But when a furniture rearrangement took place, on a whim, leaving Hazel's right side on display, James decided he liked that view even better. She was his, from every angle. The scars were a reminder that she came back”

“You may ask me, as others have done before, whether it was kindness or cruelty to allow them to meet, so soon before his departure with so little time to discover each other. Whether the pangs of loss do not invalidate the bliss of love. Especially where war is concerned, and Death runs rampant with his bloody scythe. You may say that it was wicked of me to allow James to find Hazel, and Hazel, James, if three days were all they would have. I don't call it cruelty I do not apologize”

“A white police officer had entered a black women's home without a warrant, searching for a suspect. When she protested, he beat and arrested her, dragging her from her home though she wasn't fully dressed. When a black soldier saw this and tried to intervene to defend the woman, the white policeman pistol-whipped the black soldier, seriously injuring him. The men of the beaten soldier's regiment, learning no consequences would befall the white policeman, felt abandoned by white police and army officials. They saw the abuse as a last straw in a long string of injustices. So the marched into the city. Soldiers and civilians died in the shooting that followed”

“Even Cobb, who had made a living peddling in Jim Crow stereotypes, and knew it, was moved by Johnson's heroics. He put a curious coda on his article: as a result of what our black soldiers are going to do in this war, a word that has been uttered billions of times in our country, sometimes in derision, sometimes in hate, sometimes in all kindliness-but which I am sure never fell black ears but it left behind a sting for the heart-is going to have a new meaning for all of us, South and North too, and that hereafter n-i-*-*-*-r will merely be another way of spelling the word American”