“…they had little hope of deliverance. For where does one run to when he’s already in the promised land?” (p. viii)
“I didn’t really care, because I was just waiting and wondering–waiting till I got big enough to kick his ass and wondering if he would want to talk then. I could just see him trying real hard to talk and me not listening to anything, just kicking his ass time after time.” (p. 45)
“Dixie started tricking when she was thirteen. She was big for her age, and ‘nice’ ladies used to point at her and say, ‘Oh, ain’t that a shame.’ But it wasn’t. The shame of it was that she had to do it or starve. When she got hip and went out there on the street and started turning tricks, she started eating and stopped starving. And I thought, Shit, ain’t no shame to stop starvin’. Hell, no.” (p. 169)
“…they ain’t got no kids in Harlem…they don’t have any kids in Harlem, because nobody has time for a childhood. Man, do you ever remember bein’ a kid? Not me. Shit, kids are happy, kids laugh, kids are secure. They ain’t scared-a nothin’… I ain’t never been a kid, man. I don’t ever remember bein’ happy and not scared. I don’t know what happened, man, but I think I missed out on that childhood thing, because I don’t ever recall bein’ a kid.” (Reno to Sonny, p. 295)
“…he saw me as somebody from the streets, somebody who hated to see the sun go down on Eighth Avenue, who would run up on Amsterdam Avenue, follow the sun down the hill, across Broadway, to the Drive and the Hudson River, and then would wait for the sun to come back.” (p. 426)
Claude Brown. Manchild in the Promised Land. New York: The New American Library, Inc., 1965.