“Something akin to pride kreeps into his voice, but it's a hollow sort of pride. It's the pride of someone who's rarely proud of anything. It's the type of pride that can be knocked over with a feather, and so it rarely gets to shine in the face of the world. The little Black kid flashes those impossibly white teeth at me and he laughs and then he covers his smile and quells the laughter [...], and I know that he's spent his entire life being afraid to be happy.”
Book:Hell of a Book