Native Son Quotes

"You know one thing?" Big said. "What?" "Sometimes I feel like something awful’s going to happen to me," Bigger spoke with a tinge of bitter pride in his voice. "What you mean?" Gus asked, lo...

"There he is!" the mother screamed again. A huge black rat squealed and leaped at Bigger’s trouser-leg and snagged it in his teeth, hanging on. "Goddamn!" Bigger whispered fiercely, whirling...

He thought of Gus and G.H. and Jack. Should he go to the poolroom and talk with them? But there was no use in his going unless they were ready to do what they had been long planning to do. If they...

The woman on the bed continued to sob. Bigger took a piece of newspaper and gingerly lifted the rat by its tail and held it out at arm’s length. "Bigger, take ‘im out," Vera begged agai...

"Is you Mrs. Dalton?" she asked. Mrs. Dalton moved nervously, lifted her thin, white hands and tilted her head. Her mouth came open and Mr. Dalton placed an arm about her. "Yes," Mrs. Dalton whispe...

You’ll regret how you living some day," she went on. "If you don’t stop running with that gang of yours and do right you’ll end up where you never thought you would. You think I d...

He walked home with a mounting feeling of fear. When he reached his doorway, he hesitated about going up. He didn’t want to rob Blum’s; he was scared. But he had to go through with it n...

Buddy opened out a newspaper and covered the smear of blood on the floor where the rat had been crushed. Bigger went to the window and stood looking out abstractedly into the street. His mother gla...