"Read. Always read. No one can take that away from you."
~ Percival Everett
Read all great Percival Everett quotes below ...
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Percival Everett, a trailblazing author known for his bold experimentation and incisive wit, has carved a unique niche in contemporary literature. Born in 1956 in Augusta, Georgia, Everett's upbringing in the American South would later influence much of his writing, infusing his works with a keen sense of place and an unflinching exploration of race, identity, and the human condition.
A polymath with a diverse array of interests, Everett's academic pursuits led him to earn degrees in philosophy, mathematics, and creative writing. This interdisciplinary background would shape his approach to storytelling, as he seamlessly weaves together elements of philosophy, science, and satire in his works.
Throughout his prolific career, Everett has produced a wide-ranging body of work that defies easy categorization. From literary fiction to mystery, satire, and even experimental prose, Everett's versatility as a writer is matched only by his boundless imagination.
Among his most acclaimed works is "Erasure," a satirical novel that skewers the publishing industry and societal expectations of black writers. The novel follows the story of Thelonious "Monk" Ellison, a black novelist struggling to reconcile his artistic integrity with the demands of commercial success. "Erasure" received widespread praise for its sharp social commentary, dark humor, and provocative exploration of race and identity.
Another standout work is "I Am Not Sidney Poitier," a surreal and darkly comedic novel that follows the misadventures of a young black man named Not Sidney Poitier, who shares a name with the iconic actor. Through a series of bizarre encounters and absurd situations, Everett explores themes of identity, celebrity, and the absurdity of modern life.
What sets Everett apart is his fearless approach to storytelling and his refusal to adhere to conventional literary norms. Known for his sly wit, intellectual depth, and razor-sharp prose, Everett challenges readers to question their assumptions and confront uncomfortable truths about society and the human condition.
Readers are drawn to Everett's work for its intellectual rigor, narrative inventiveness, and biting social commentary. Whether he's crafting intricate mysteries, probing philosophical inquiries, or dissecting the complexities of race and identity, Everett's novels offer a thought-provoking journey into the heart of the human experience.
While Everett has received numerous accolades throughout his career, including the PEN Center USA Award for Fiction and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, his influence extends beyond the realm of traditional literary recognition. As a professor of English at the University of Southern California, Everett has mentored countless aspiring writers and scholars, leaving an indelible mark on the next generation of literary voices.
For those seeking a literary experience that challenges, provokes, and inspires, Percival Everett's novels are essential reading. With their unparalleled wit, intellect, and imagination, Everett's works push the boundaries of fiction and offer readers a glimpse into the mind of one of contemporary literature's most daring and inventive voices.
As for upcoming projects, details about Everett's next novel remain scarce. However, anticipation is high among fans eager to see what imaginative and thought-provoking tale he will unleash upon the literary world next.
Percival Everett Best Quotes
“Everybody should read fiction… I don’t think serious fiction is written for a few people. I think we live in a stupid culture that won’t educate its people to read these things. It would be a much more interesting place if it would. And it’s not just that mechanics and plumbers don’t read literary fiction, it’s that doctors and lawyers don’t read literary fiction. It has nothing to do with class, it has to do with an anti-intellectual culture that doesn’t trust art.” ― Percival Everett “Read. Always read. No one can take that away from you.” ― Percival Everett, I Am Not Sidney Poitier “Why will I bury you? So that one day I might disturb your grave.” ― Percival Everett, The Water Cure “Everybody talks about genocides around the world, but when the killing is slow and spread over a hundred years, no one notices. Where there are no mass graves, no one notices. American outrage is always for show. It has a shelf life.” ― Percival Everett, The Trees “It's okay to love something bigger than yourself without fearing it. Anything worth loving is bigger than we are anyway.” ― Percival Everett, Wounded “You should know I consider police shootings to be lynchings” ― Percival Everett, The Trees “Linda Mallory is the postmodern fuck.” ― Percival Everett, Erasure “I was, in life, to be a gambler, a risk taker, a swashbuckler, a knight. I accepted, then and there, my place in this world. I was a fighter of windmills. I was a chaser of whales.” ― Percival Everett, I Am Not Sidney Poitier “It’s a bitch, ain’t it? The things we assume.” ― Percival Everett, I Am Not Sidney Poitier “Why are people so fucked up?” I asked“Maybe you do need college, Poiter,” Everett said. “You want to know why people are so fucked up? Son, that’s about the only question I can answer with even a small measure of authority. It’s because they’re people. People, my friend, are worse than anybody.” ― Percival Everett, I Am Not Sidney Poitier “I don’t think meaning exists without form, and certainly form does not exist without meaning. Meaning and story come first. Story is the most important part of fiction. Without it, what’s the point? If all you care about is form, become a critic.” ― Percival Everett “I had never heard such bullshit in my life. I opened my mouth and said, "I have never heard such bullshit in my life.” ― Percival Everett, Telephone “When you step on the gas, do it gently, softly, slowly. Okay? All right, let's try it again. Gently. Treat it like you would a woman.""I would never step on a woman.” ― Percival Everett, Dr. No "There's no need to be insulting.” ― Percival Everett, Dr. No “Like most people I am smarter than some, dumber than others, skinnier than most, and fatter than a few, but none was ever more confused than I was. I flew with confusion always parallel to me, and a whole internal chase at my rear. The one matter that was not confusing to me, but seemed to escape all the others, was the fact that the only thing that was certain to become obsolete, would necessarily become wearied and worn, was the truth. I knew this in spite of the truth that I had had little truck with the truth in my life. It was not that I considered myself a resident in a den of lies, but rather that my history was shrouded and diced and soaking wet with hysteria and contradiction. Contradictions or no, my trajectory through life, though different from most, was, nonetheless, a trajectory.” ― Percival Everett, I Am Not Sidney Poitier “And though I missed my lover, I was not sad. I was satisfied. I was different.” ― Percival Everett, So Much Blue “She stared at the television. “Why is it that after all the bullets have bounced off Superman’s chest, he then ducks when the villain throws the empty gun at him?” ― Percival Everett, I Am Not Sidney Poitier “It had a rear bumper sticker that read Legalize Recreational Plutonium.” ― Percival Everett, Dr. No “I chose the word enemy, and still do, as oppressor necessarily supposes a victim.” ― Percival Everett, James “Dey takes the lies dey want and throws away the truths dat scares ’em.” ― Percival Everett, James “The lie felt good because I had taken control of the narrative around me. The” ― Percival Everett, So Much Blue “The world demands that you introduce yourself twice, first as you are, and second as you are told to be.” ― Percival Everett, Erasure “The children said together, “And the better they feel, the safer we are.” “February, translate that.” “Da mo’ betta dey feels, da mo’ safer we be.” “Nice.” ― Percival Everett, James “It's incredible that a sentence is ever understood. Mere sounds strung together by some agent attempting to mean some thing but the meaning need not, and does not, confine itself to that intention.” ― Percival Everett, Erasure “Of all possible worlds this was the one in which I had landed.” ― Percival Everett, Telephone “What’s your dog’s name?” “Oh, he ain’t got no name.” “Why’s that?” “I don’t like names,” the man said, looking down at his pet. “How do you call it?” Jim asked. “Call it?” ― Percival Everett, The Trees “She had to know, and I’m certain she did, that even the simple matter of dark skin would be a cause of consternation for her parents. I came to imagine them as Ward and June Cleaver. I recalled my mother happening upon me watching that television show one afternoon. It launched her into such a fit of hysteria that I was afraid she might become pregnant again.“How dare they put that propaganda on the television?” my mother barked. “But of course that’s what the box is for, isn’t it? Here is my black son sitting here in his black neighborhood watching some bucktoothed little rat and his washed-out, anally stabbed Nazi-Christian parents.”“There’s a brother, too,” I said, being six or so and not really understanding the tirade.“Oh, a brother, too. I see him there, an older lily white acorn fallen so close to the tree. Turn that crap off. No, leave it on. Study the problem, Not Sidney. Soak it in.” With that she marched off to make cookies.” ― Percival Everett, I Am Not Sidney Poitier “It’s almost noon, Trig,” I said. “We’ve nearly run out of morning. A sad thought, morning being my favorite part of the day. My least favorite part of the day is from 2: 34 to 4:56 in the afternoon.” ― Percival Everett, Dr. No “He resisted the urge to let satire ring through his voice.” ― Percival Everett, Damned if I Do “And like my BIPDIP husband, it's never been out of the state, not even to Boston."BIPDIP?"Born in Providence, died in Providence. We actually honeymooned in Newport. I hate him so much.” ― Percival Everett, Dr. No “Now here he was, tailored iron-gray suit, thin maroon tie, a maroon handkerchief peeking out from his breast pocket. His oxblood wing tips gleamed. He looked like a supervillain or, worse, an upper-crust English spy, an openly promiscuous and functionally alcoholic heterosexual with an on-and-off-again messiah complex. It was the shoes, the way they were tied.” ― Percival Everett, Dr. No “In the year of your lord 1963, August 27, I was in a hotel room with John Lewis and three other members of SNCC and I was livid. I had provided several lines to John’s speech and they were being removed. I remember the lines. The first was, If the dogs of the South continue unchained, then we will bite back, we will move on those tender parts that bleed so readily, that bleed so profusely. Okay, I said, understanding that there was a lot of blood in the statement—rather, threat—and so I added the word nonviolently. This was not satisfactory. The next line was, The Kennedy administration does not even talk a good game, failing to support voters’ rights while paying mere lip service to civil rights, as if there is a difference. We say fuck the administration that still walks hand in hand with Jim Crow. Well, I could see that the word fuck was a bit strong and so I suggested screw and then 45 screw nonviolently. I was never much of a player in the politics of the day after that evening.” ― Percival Everett, Percival Everett by Virgil Russell “History is a motherfucker,” ― Percival Everett, The Trees “Linda Mallory was the postmodern fuck. She was self conscious to the point of distraction, counted her orgasms and felt none of them. She worried about how she looked while making love, about how her expression changed when she started to come, whether she was too tight, too loose, too dry, too wet, too loud, to quiet and she found need to express these concerns during the course of the event.” ― Percival Everett, Erasure “You know', I said, 'I have come to dislike museums.’ 'Why is that?’, she asked. 'It is where art comes to die.” ― Percival Everett, So Much Blue “People should know, understand that not all Thursdays are the same.” ― Percival Everett, The Trees “Why are you still a priest?” Eigen asked, not letting the subject go.“My dear girl,” Karras said. “I remain a goddamn cleric because in this world one needs something to hide behind. I have chosen this fucking collar. You have chosen mathematics.” ― Percival Everett, Dr. No “It could have been my turn to experience a bit of guilt, having toyed with the boy's feelings, and he being too young to actually understand the problem with his behavior, but I chose not to. When you are a slave, you claim choice where you can.” ― Percival Everett, James “He wondered if a man actively seeking to surrender could be captured.” ― Percival Everett, Walk Me to the Distance “I can tell you that I am a man who is cognizant of his world, a man who has a family, who loves a family, who has been torn from his family, a man who can read and write, a man who will not let his story be self-related, but self-written.” ― Percival Everett, James “They wanted a constitution that would justify their behavior. If I hadn't written it for them, someone else would have. What in the world would be different if that had happened?” ― Percival Everett, James “If you're not making mistakes, you're not learning.” ― Percival Everett, James “As a matter of fact, just recently I passed for white so I could pass for black.” ― Percival Everett, James “Goddamnit, I hate murder more than just about anything,” said Sheriff Red Jetty. “It can just ruin a day.” ― Percival Everett, The Trees “I thought about tearing out his songs and burning them, but they would still exist. Those crackers would still sing them. Better to know they exist. Don't you think?” ― Percival Everett, James “- You know, dull tools are much more dangerous than sharp ones.- I paused to admire his metaphor, but he continued.” ― Percival Everett, James “We're slaves. We're not anywhere. Free person, he can be where he wants to be. The only place we can ever be is in slavery.” ― Percival Everett, James “Just keep living,” I said. “Just remember, once they see you, or see me in you, you’ve been seen. I know you don’t understand. But you will one day.” ― Percival Everett, James “Just remember, once they see you, or see me in you, you've been seen. I know you don't understand. But you will one day.” ― Percival Everett, James “I did not look away. I wanted to feel the anger. I was befriending my anger, learning not only how to feel it, but perhaps how to use it.” ― Percival Everett, James “Belief has nothing to do with truth. Believe what you like. Believe I'm lying and move through the world as a white boy. Believe I'm telling the truth and move through the world as a white boy anyway. Either way, no difference.” ― Percival Everett, James “Without someone white to claim me as property, there was no justification for my presence, perhaps for my existence.” ― Percival Everett, James “He could have gone through life without the knowledge I had given him and he would have been no worse off for it. But I understood at that moment that I had shared the truth with him for myself. I needed for him to have a choice.” ― Percival Everett, James “White people often spent time admiring their survival of one thing or another. I imagined it was because so often they had no need to survive, but only to live.” ― Percival Everett, James “I hated the world that wouldn’t let me apply justice without the certain retaliation of injustice.” ― Percival Everett, James “To fight in a war,' he said. 'Can you imagine?''Would that mean facing death every day and doing what other people tell you to do?' I asked.'I reckon.''Yes, Huck. I can imagine.” ― Percival Everett, James “You want me to lie?' Huck asked.'Yes, I want you to lie. You can't very well tell her I'm dead and have it be true. Yes, I want you to lie. Lie hard. Now go.” ― Percival Everett, James “I will be outraged as a matter of course. But my interest is in how these marks that I am scratching on this page can mean anything at all. If they can have meaning, then life can have meaning, then I can have meaning.” ― Percival Everett, James “could believe it, I thought, pretending, in slave fashion, not to be there. After being cruel, the most notable white attribute was gullibility.” ― Percival Everett, James “Which would frighten you more? A slave who is crazy or a slave who is sane and sees you clearly?” ― Percival Everett, James “I had to hide my excitement about the discovery of books.” ― Percival Everett, James “In the garden the lovely flycatcher perches, watching as I deadhead the roses, plucking wilted petals in fistfuls and letting them float like messages to the dirt. The little bird casually studies my hand as it folds into a ball then fan-fingers out into some kind of idea perhaps. All the airish signic of her dipandump helpabit, and I have finally accepted her seat there on that spindly branch, her assiduous presence. She stretches out her wings, letting the sun bathe them, so that I can see her breast, see that her chest is clean of graffiti, clear of symbols, free of meaning.” ― Percival Everett, The Water Cure “At that moment the power of reading made itself clear and real to me.” ― Percival Everett, James “Long time ago. It was their daddies who killed Emmett Till back in the fifties,” Hayes said.” ― Percival Everett, The Trees “I felt an inch tall because I had expected this young woman with the blue fingernails to be a certain way, to be slow and stupid, but she was neither. I was the stupid one.” ― Percival Everett, Erasure “I considered the northern white stance against slavery. How much of the desire to end the institution was fueled by a need to quell and subdue white guilt and pain? Was it just too much to watch? Did it offend Christian sensibilities to live in a society that allowed that practice? I knew that whatever the cause of their war, freeing slaves was an incidental premise and would be an incidental result.” ― Percival Everett, James “For some reason hospital elevators always seem to go too fast or too slow.” ― Percival Everett, Cutting Lisa “Was it evil to kill evil? The truth was that I didn't care. It was this apathy that left me wondering about myself - not wondering why I didn't feel anything or whether I was incapable of feeling, but wondering what else I was capable of doing. It was not an altogether bad feeling.” ― Percival Everett, James “I thought you were going to say I was dead,' I said.'I just couldn't kill you off,' the boy said.'Thank you, Huck.” ― Percival Everett, James “Because we must let the whites be the ones who name the trouble.” “And why is that?” I asked. February said, “Because they need to know everything before us. Because they need to name everything.” ― Percival Everett, James “I knew that whatever the cause of their war, freeing slaves was an incidental premise and would be an incident result.” ― Percival Everett, James “I had never seen a white man filled with such fear. The remarkable truth, however, was that it was not the pistol, but my language, the fact that I didn’t conform to his expectations, that I could read, that had so disturbed and frightened him.” ― Percival Everett, James “My voice, even in my head, had found its root in my diaphragm, had become sonorous and round. My pencil had more firmly grasped the pages of my newly dried notebook. I saw more clearly, farther, further. My name became my own.” ― Percival Everett, James “I recall that I am extremely forgetful. Nothing happened.” ― Percival Everett, Dr. No “Unknown Male is a name,” the old woman said. “In a way, it’s more of a name than any of the others. A little more than life was taken from them.” ― Percival Everett, The Trees “I'm wanted for being a runaway, kidnapping, theft and murder.''Are you guilty?' Holly asked.'Does it matter?' I asked.” ― Percival Everett, James “Why did God set it up like this?” Rachel asked. “With them as masters and us as slaves?” “There is no God, child. There’s religion but there’s no God of theirs. Their religion tells that we will get our reward in the end. However, it apparently doesn’t say anything about their punishment. But when we’re around them, we believe in God. Oh, Lawdy Lawd, we’s be believin’. Religion is just a controlling tool they employ and adhere to when convenient.” “There must be something,” Virgil said. “I’m sorry, Virgil. You might be right. There might be some higher power, children, but it’s not their white God. However, the more you talk about God and Jesus and heaven and hell, the better they feel.” The children said together, “And the better they feel, the safer we are.” ― Percival Everett, James “There was nothing scarier than human sounds.” ― Percival Everett, James “I am James.” ― Percival Everett, James “Those little bastards were hiding out there in the tall grass.Just James” ― Percival Everett, James “I kin see how much you miss yer family and yet I don’t think about it. I forget that you feel things jest like I feel. I know you love them.” ― Percival Everett, James “Was she pretty?” he asked. “I dunno. I reckon. It’s a scary thing for a slave to think such things.” “Why is that?” “Jest the way the world is.” “You think this here river is pretty?” Huck asked. “I reckon I do,” I said. “Then why you cain’t say if my mama was pretty?” “River ain’t a white woman.” ― Percival Everett, James “And yet, with all that running, no place appeared like a new place. Perhaps that was the nature of escape.” ― Percival Everett, James “nothing as Luke, with a hint of a grin on his now-ugly face, tied my hands with a hemp rope to a post. I said nothing as my shirt was ripped, by someone unidentified, from my body. I said nothing as the leather stung me, ripped me, burned me. Before I passed out, I was surprised by the realization that my flowing” ― Percival Everett, James “I reckon I do that, too,” the boy said. “What say?” “I kin see how much you miss yer family and yet I don’t think about it. I forget that you feel things jest like I feel. I know you love them.” “Thank you, Huck.” ― Percival Everett, James “Wilde: Have you ever walked through a thunderstorm carrying a long, metal pipe?Joyce: No, I haven’t.Wilde: You should try it.” ― Percival Everett “There might not have been the heaven that so many fools advertised, but there certainly was a hell, and it smelled like blood and cold cereal and the family dog.” ― Percival Everett, Telephone “Perhaps to protect me from the bright light of God. If there was a God, he or she was no good at its job. Apparently there was just too much to do, listening to the prayers of all those who actually mattered, the faithful, the pious, the deluded, the stupid.” ― Percival Everett, Telephone “It was so much like falling.” ― Percival Everett, Telephone"