It's not nothing when you're abroad and you don't have a washing machine. Darryl Pinckney More Quotes by Darryl Pinckney More Quotes From 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 overblacksittingsummer I know black kids who don't even know any other black kids except their cousins. And that's enough. You wouldn't look at these kids and say that they are Uncle Toms or self-hating or fleeing or trying to be white, given the culture in which they live, which is very natural to them as kids. Darryl Pinckney lookyoublackculture Identity is made up of lots of different things now. Different colors and patterns stand out at different times. Different instruments in the symphony of being are more distinct than others at different times. Darryl Pinckney standthingscolorsidentity Unfortunately for me, I was one of these people who took a long time to learn that the material at his feet was fine. Darryl Pinckney metimelongpeople I had a lot of notes and fragments and observations that never amounted to anything. After the Wall had gone down, so many people were writing about Berlin, I didn't have the same urgency or feel enough authority. Darryl Pinckney downfeelneverpeople Eventually, I gave up my sublet in Berlin and stayed in England for a long time - for about 20 years. Darryl Pinckney long-timetimelongyears For a long time, Nella Larsen was the mystery woman of the Harlem Renaissance. In the late 1920s, she published two sophisticated novels, 'Quicksand' and 'Passing,' and then her writing life came to an end. She died in obscurity in 1964. Darryl Pinckney womantimelifelong If the sensitive washout has no taste for extreme gestures, total self-destruction, then his hope for singularity rests in his voice. Tone is everything. Darryl Pinckney everythingvoicetastehope Paule Marshall does not let the black women in her fiction lose. While they lose friends, lovers, husbands, homes, or jobs, they always find themselves. Darryl Pinckney losefriendswomenblack Harlem's streets lead backward, into history, straight to a work such as 'This Was Harlem.' Darryl Pinckney leadstreetsworkhistory 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 grandparentsmemorylegendsblack 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 meshadowdarktime I carried props into the subway - the latest 'Semlotext(e),' a hefty volume of the Frankfurt School - so that the employed would not get the wrong idea or, more to the point, the usual idea about me. Darryl Pinckney wrongmoremeschool Novels set in distant places give us expectations not unlike those we have of travel writing, and often the distinctions are blurred, as in, say, the way the low life of Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward is depicted in John David Morley's recent 'Pictures from the Water Trade.' Darryl Pinckney pictureswaterlifetravel Steven Spielberg's 'The Color Purple' might as well have been about a bunch of dancing eggplants for all it has to say about black history. Darryl Pinckney sayblackcolorhistory
