HOLLOWAY: You need to be trying to find you a job.

STERLING: I been trying to get one. Ain’t nobody got none. I wish I could get one of them white folks’ job making eight or nine thousand dollars a year.

HOLLOWAY: You ain’t got none of them white folks’ education . . .  how you gonna get one of their jobs?

STERLING: Hey, I can do anything. I told the judge I could do his job. I got enough sense to sit up there and tell right from wrong. I can tell when somebody getting railroaded . . .  when the lawyer is talking too much. I got sense enough to know when it’s lunch time and how to say “recess.” I can do anything the white man can do. If the truth be told . . .  most things I can do better.

HOLLOWAY: I see where you gonna end up back down there.

STERLING: Not in this life. All I do is try to live in the world, but the world done gone crazy. I’m sorry I was ever born into it. This woman told me one time, “Sterling, I wanna have your baby.” I told her if we have a baby he might live to be seventy-five years old. Just think how much hell he gonna catch. I wouldn’t do that to nobody. She told me I was crazy. Hell, maybe she was right. But nobody will ever come to me and say, “You responsible for this. You brought me into this crazy world.”

WOLF: That’s why I don’t have no kids. I said the same thing.

STERLING: Hey, Wolf . . .  tell him . . .  what kind of world is this?

HOLLOWAY: You sit around talking about you want this . . .  you want the other . . .  you want a job . . .  you want a car. What you don’t know is everybody that want one got one. You talking about you want one and ain’t doing nothing to get none. The people that have them is the people that wanted them. You don’t do nothing but sit around and talk about what you ain’t got. The more you sit around and talk about what you ain’t got the more you have to talk about. Wait two or three years and see what you have to talk about then.

STERLING: I know what I’m doing. I’m gonna get me two or three Cadillacs and everything that go with them. If I can’t find no job I might have to find me a gun. Hey, Wolf, you know anybody got a gun they want to sell?

WOLF: What you looking for?