Ti-Jean and His Brothers Quotes

MOTHER: Wait, and God will send us something.
GROS JEAN: God forget where he put us.
MI JEAN: God too irresponsible.

“Get out of my way, you slimy bastard! How God could make such things?”

“What counts in this world is money and power.”

“Remember what the old son of a leaf-gathering beggar said? He said that working for the Devil was the shortest way to success. Well, I walked up through the bush then I come onto a large field. Estate-like, you know. Sugar, tobacco, and a hell of a big white house where they say the Devil lives. Ay-ay. So two next black fellers bring me up to him. Big white man, his hand cold as an axe blade and his mind twice as sharp.”

“Other people want what I have, Charley, and other people have more. Can’t help myself, Joe, it’s some sort of disease, and it spreads right down to the common man.”

“Sorry, sorry, Gros Jean, sometimes we people in charge of industry forget that you people aren’t machines. I mean people like you, Hubert…”

“A man is no better than an animal. The one with two legs makes more noise and that make him believe he can think.”

“Descendant of the ape, how eloquent you have become! How assured in logic! How marvelous in invention! And yet, poor shaving monkey, the animal in you is still in evidence...”

“You are hardly a man, a stalk, bending in the wind with no will of its own, never proven your self, in battle or wisdom […]”

“You have told me yourself our lives are not ours, that no one’s life is theirs husband or wife, father or son, that our life is God’s own.”