“"Yeah, well, everything's worse than before, or maybe it's the same as before. I don't know. I just know that I want to live my own life. I don't want to be my old man's office boy no more. And as long as I'm in this place I will be. Unless I have my own money. I have to get out of that house and I don't want to owe anybody when I go. My family's driving me crazy. Daddy wants me to be like him and hate my mother. My mother wants me to think like her and hate my father. Corinthians won't speak to me; Lena wants me out. And Hagar wants me chained to her bed or dead. Everybody wants something from me, you know what I mean? Something they think they can't get anywhere else. Something they think I got. I don't know what it is - I mean what it is they really want."
Guitar stretched his legs. "They want your life, man."
"My life?"
"What else?"
"No. Hagar wants my life. My family. . . they want - “
“I don't mean that way. I don't mean they want your dead life; they want your living life."
"You're losing me,” said Milkman.
"Look. It's the condition our condition is in. Everybody wants the life of a black man. Everybody. White men want us dead or quiet - which is the same thing as dead. White women, same thing. They want us, you know, 'universal, human, no 'race consciousness.' Tame, except in bed. They like a little racial loincloth in the bed. But outside the bed they want us to be individuals. You tell them, 'But they lynched my papa,' and they say, 'Yeah, but you're better than the lynchers are, so forget it.’ And black women, they want your whole self. Love, they call it, and understanding. 'Why don't you understand me?' What they mean is, Don't love anything on earth except me. They say, 'Be responsible,’ but what they mean is, Don't go anywhere where I ain't. You try to climb Mount Everest, they'lI tie up your ropes. Tell them you want to go to the bottom of the sea - just for a look - they'll hide your oxygen tank. Or you don't even have to go that far. Buy a horn and say you want to play. Oh, they love the music, but only after you pull eight at the post office. Even if you make it, even if you stubborn and mean and you get to the top of Mount Everest, or you do play and you good, real good that still ain't enough. You blow your lungs out on the horn and they want what breath you got left to hear about how you love them. They want your full attention. Take a risk and they say you not for real. That you don't love them. They won't even let you risk your own life, man, your own life - unless it's over them. You can't even die unless it's about them. What good is a man's life if he can't even choose what to die for?"
"Nobody can choose what to die for."
"Yes you can, and if you can't, you can damn well try to." (pages 239 - 240)
