- Sintara Golden: Potential is what people see when they think what's in front of them isn't good enough.
- Arthur: What is this? I told you to dress street.
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: I did!
- Arthur: Fucking Sesame Street.
- Coraline: [speaking to Monk] One day maybe you'll learn that not being able to relate to other people isn't a badge of honor.
- Agnes Ellison: Your father was a genius. Geniuses are lonely because they can't connect with the rest of us. You're a genius, son.
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: I certainly don't feel like one half the time.
- Ailene Hoover: I think it's "Fuck" for me.
- Jon Daniel Sigmarsen: Yeah, me too.
- Wilson Harnet: Yeah, I agree.
- Sintara Golden: I disagree, I'm sorry.
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: I think it would be a mistake to award this book anything.
- Jon Daniel Sigmarsen: Well, it's 2 versus 3 so... "Fuck"'s the winner.
- Ailene Hoover: [writing on board] "Fuck" is the winner.
- Ailene Hoover: You know, it's not just that it's so affecting, I just think it's essential to listen to Black voices right now.
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: Listen. This is a class on the literature of the American South. we're going to encounter some archaic thoughts and coarse language, but we're all adults here and I think we can understand it within the context in which it's written.
- Brittany: Well, I just find that word really offensive.
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: With all due respect, Brittany, I got over it. I'm pretty sure you can too.
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: Let me say first, Carl, that I'm honored you'd choose me out of all the black writers you could go to out of fear of being called racist.
- Arthur: I be standing outside in the night, a police chopper go by and shine some lights in some backyards and I think, 'Shine that light on me, mo'fucka, shine me some fuckin' light so I can see where the fuck I be at.'
- Arthur: Are you serious?
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: You notice I didn't put my name on it.
- Arthur: Nobody in Hollywood reads. They get their assistants to read things and then summarize them. The whole town runs on book reports.
- Ailene Hoover: People have worked hard on these books and we have to respect that.
- Wilson Harnet: Hard work doesn't demand respect. People worked hard on the Third Reich.
- Arthur: This thing scares me.
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: Scares you? Why?
- Arthur: Because white people think they want the truth, but they don't. They just want to feel absolved.
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: Well, fortunately, that's not my problem.
- Arthur: Check this out.
- [picks up 3 bottles of whiskey]
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: I don't care how drunk we get. I'm not selling it.
- Arthur: That's not what I'm doing. Johnnie Walker Red. 24 bucks. johnnie Walker Black. 50 bucks. Johnnie Walker Blue. One hundred and sixty dollars. See the metaphor?
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: No.
- Arthur: These are all made by the same company. The red is shit. The black is less shit. The blue is good. But fewer people buy the blue because it's expensive. And at the end of the day, most people just want to get drunk. For most of your career, your books have been blue. They're good, complex. But they're not popular because most people wnat something easy. Now, for the first time, ever, you've written a red book. It's simple, prurient... it's not great literature, but it satisfies an urge. And that's valuable. What I'm trying to illustrate is that... just because you do red, doesn't mean you can't also do blue. You can do it all. Like Johnnie Walker. In fact, you got Johnnie Walker beat because, you don't even have to put your real name on it.
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: [takes off glasses, head in his hands] Shesus. Do we drink now?
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: You're not fed up with it? Black people in poverty, black people rapping, black people are slaves, black people murdered by police, whole soaring narratives about black folks in dire circumstances who still manage to maintain their dignity before they die.I mean, I'm not saying these things aren't real, but we're also more than this. It's like so many writers like you can't envision us without some white boot on our necks.
- Sintara Golden: Do you get angry at Bret Easton Ellis or Charles Bukowski for writing about the downtrodden? Or is your ire reserved strictly for black women?
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: Nobody reads Bukowski thinking his is the definitive white experience, but people... white people read your book and confine us to it. They think we're all like that.
- Lorraine: You look good, Mr. Monk.
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: I look fat.
- Lorraine: Aah, that's the California talking. I took you to Arkansas right now, you'd be a beauty queen.
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: That's frightening.
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: My life is a disaster, but not in the way you'd think reading this shit. These things reduce us, and they do it over and over again because too many white people and people, apparently like you, devour this slop like pigs in a dumpster to stay current at fucking cocktail parties.
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: Who is that? What are you doing?
- Clifford Ellison: I've taken a lover.
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: You've taken a lover?
- Clifford Ellison: You got a problem with that, homophobe?
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: I'm not offended that you've taken a lover, Cliff. I'm offended, Cliff, that you call it 'taking a lover.'
- Clifford Ellison: Hmm. You can eat shit, nigga. I'm gonna take my lover right now.
- Brittany: I don't have a thought on the reading. I just think that that word on the board is wrong.
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: Well, I think it still has two g's in it last I checked.
- Paula Baderman: [On a conference call with the author and his editor] Hello?
- Arthur: Hello Paula!
- Paula Baderman: Arthur! So wonderful to hear from you. I hope you are with the man of the hour.
- Arthur: I am indeed. He's right here next to me.
- Paula Baderman: Mr. Leigh?
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: [Speaking as the author "Stagg R. Leigh"] Uh, yeah, this is he.
- Paula Baderman: [Surprised] Oh, really?
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: Uh, uh, yeah, dammit!
- Paula Baderman: [Relieved] Right.
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: Mother
- [expletive]
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: !
- Paula Baderman: Right, okay, um, yeah, I was a little confused at first.
- Sintara Golden: I don't need to write about my life. I write about what interests people.
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: You write what interests white publishers fiending black trauma porn.
- Maynard: It's always easier dealing with other people's families than your own.
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: I regret to inform you that in a couple hours, this will be your family.
- Jon Daniel Sigmarsen: Most of it's gonna be that canoe's guard autofiction crap anyhow... I'll tell you something right now, I'm not reading 600 pages about some pretentious jagwagon discovering masturbation.
- John Bosco: It is very... ah... ah...
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: Black?
- John Bosco: That's it. Yes. That's it. I'm happy you said it and not me.
- [laughs nervously]
- Paula Baderman: Aw. Fuck.
- John Bosco: It's fucking great, Stagg. Yes.
- Paula Baderman: You know it's so brave, actually.
- Coraline: How can you afford this place? You're not a drug dealer or something, are you?
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: No, I'm a writer. And you're my girlfriend, not my bookkeeper.
- Kenny: Oh, hello!
- Agnes Ellison: Mookie, do we know these men?
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: No, Mother, this isn't the Alzheimer's, these are actual strangers. Who are you people?
- Alvin: We're Cliff's friends.
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: Of course you are.
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: What do you suggest we do?
- Lisa Ellison: Why do I have to decide?
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: [hesitating] Because you're a doctor.
- Lisa Ellison: So are you!
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: I'm not that kind.
- Arthur: People wanna love you, Monk. I personally don't know what they see in you, but they wanna love you. You should let them love all of you.
- Sintara Golden: But the feeling I couldn't shake was that no matter how good the books were, most every submission was from some white dude in New York going through a divorce. And too few of them were about my people. So I think... where are our stories? Where's our representation? And it was from that lack that my book was born.
- [crowd applause]
- Sintara's Moderator: Would you give us the pleasure of reading an excerpt?
- Sintara Golden: "Yo Shoronda! Where you be goin' in a hurry like dat?," Donna axed me when she seed me comin' out da house. "Ain' none yuh business, but if'n ya gots ta know, I'ze goin' to the pharmacy." I looks back at da do' to see if Mama comin' out. "The pharmacy? What fo?" she axe. "You know, " I says. "Naw," she say. "Hell naw! Girl, you be pregnant again?" "Might's be," I tells her. An' if I is, Ray-Ray's gonna be a real father, this time aroun'."
- [crowd applause]
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: It's very kind of you to let them stay.
- Maynard: It's always easy dealing with other people's families than your own.
- Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison: I regret to inform you that in a couple hours, this will be your family.