25 Darryl Pinckney Quotes for You to Enjoy

Darryl Pinckney

American Novelist

Born: 1953

After Black History Long Me People

Related authors: Elie Wiesel Ernest Hemingway H. P. Lovecraft James Baldwin John Updike Leo Rosten Nathaniel Hawthorne Richard Bach

Slave narratives had their greatest influence on public opinion and on literature in the U.S. between 1830 and 1860. After Reconstruction's defeat, their urgency of tone was replaced by the softer one of reminiscence. Darryl Pinckney

Defeat Softer Reconstruction Had Between Opinion Greatest Narratives Replaced Influence After Literature Public Urgency Public Opinion Tone Slave

The nameless loser in Jay McInerney's 'Bright Lights, Big City' is going to the dogs like a gentleman. He is too smart to blame anyone for the impasse he has come to, hip enough to know he does not know enough, too sophisticated to masquerade as an anti-hero. Darryl Pinckney

Blame Smart Big Gentleman Too Enough City Impasse He Masquerade Lights Come Like Sophisticated Know Does Hip Big City Dogs Loser Going Anyone Jay Bright Bright Lights

In the years after World War I, blacks began to migrate to the North and its imagined freedoms in great numbers - 'Russian' came to mean a black who had rushed from the South. Darryl Pinckney

Jean Toomer is a phantom of the Harlem Renaissance. Pick up any general study of the literature written by Afro-Americans, and there is the name of Jean Toomer. In biographies and memoirs of Harlem Renaissance figures, his name is invoked as if he had been one of the sights along Lenox Avenue. Darryl Pinckney

I wrote 'Black Deutschland' very quickly one summer, probably because I had a lot of it in pieces and fragments sitting around over the years as false starts or notes. Darryl Pinckney

Black Starts Fragments Summer Had Over Pieces Wrote Because Around Years False Lot Very Quickly Sitting Notes

Harlem exists in retrospect, in the memory of grandparents or elderly cousins, those 'old-timers' ever ready with their geysers of remembered scenes. The legends of 'Black Mecca' are preserved in the glossy musicals of Times Square and in texts of virtually every kind. Darryl Pinckney

Memory Black Every Preserved Virtually Those Musicals Kind Scenes Remembered Retrospect Ready Cousins Exists Texts Square Times Times Square Legends Elderly Grandparents Mecca Ever Harlem

Once upon a time, I was morbidly sensitive about the impertinence born of sociology. Taxi drivers would not stop for me after dark; white girls jogged to keep ahead of my shadow thrown at their heels by the amber street lamps. Part of me didn't blame them, but most of me was hurt. Darryl Pinckney

Time Me Hurt Blame Dark Girl White Once Would Born Shadow About Thrown Drivers Part Most Amber Stop After Sensitive Lamps Heels Them Taxi Keep Street Sociology

The name James Baldwin had been around the house for as long as I could remember and meant almost as much as that of Martin Luther King. Darryl Pinckney

Remember King Long Martin Martin Luther Martin Luther King Could Had Almost Name House Around Been James Much Meant Luther

Baldwin gave expression to the longings of blacks in exalted prose. He was embraced, in the tradition of Negro Firsterism, even by those who never sat down with a book, as our preeminent literary spokesman, whether he liked it or not. Neither athlete nor entertainer, but nevertheless a star. Darryl Pinckney

Book Down Gave Our Those Neither Entertainer Athlete Embraced Exalted Blacks Never He Prose Spokesman Nevertheless Liked Tradition Nor Literary Whether Who Sat Even Star Expression

I never read lying down. Darryl Pinckney

Down Lying Never Read

I was a slow and lazy reader as a kid. 'The Prince and the Pauper' was the only non-school book I would read, over and over, between television, records and radio, until I picked up my aunt's copy of 'In Cold Blood' and she didn't ask for it back. Darryl Pinckney

Book Slow Cold Back Kid Television Would Only Records Lazy Picked Between Over Prince Until She Read Reader Aunt Blood Up Ask Radio Copy

Race pride, socialist ideals, and a sincerity as exalted as that of Carlyle's visionaries coalesced in Asa Philip Randolph. Darryl Pinckney

Pride Philip Visionaries Exalted Sincerity Ideals Race Socialist

After Reconstruction, black newspapers evolved from being a propaganda arm into a kind of opposition press, because even the friends of former slaves had their fears. Darryl Pinckney

Black Fears Press Evolved Kind Reconstruction Propaganda Had Arm Because Opposition Friends Being After Former Newspapers Even Slaves

Black America has always felt itself divided into two classes: the mucky-mucks and the folk. Darryl Pinckney

Black Black America Folk Classes Divided Felt Always Itself America Two

The demise of Reconstruction had made it hard for blacks to acquire capital or to pass on property to their children. As blacks were driven from all but the most limited spheres of business and political life, the prestige of the professional rose in the black community. Darryl Pinckney

Life Property Business Political Black Made Community Rose Spheres Prestige Black Community Reconstruction Blacks Driven Had Demise Most Limited Pass Were Political Life Children Acquire Capital Hard Professional

'Invisible Man' holds such an honored place in African-American literature that Ralph Ellison didn't have to write anything else to break bread with the remembered dead. But he did try to go on, because if a writer has done one great thing, then the pressures to do another are intense. Darryl Pinckney

Great Man Try Ralph Else Honored Pressures Write Writer He Remembered Invisible Great Thing Dead Another Because Go Did Intense Done African-American Bread Anything Break Anything Else Holds Literature Place Then Thing

Ellison was prominent on the lecture circuit even in the Black Aesthetic days of the Sixties when his defiantly pro-American and prickly-proud intellectual act met with some hostility. Darryl Pinckney

Black Met Circuit Prominent Some Hostility Days Aesthetic His Lecture Intellectual Pro-American Sixties Act Even

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