The Sun Does Shine

by

Anthony Ray Hinton

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Anthony Ray Hinton Character Analysis

Anthony Ray Hinton, who goes by Ray, is the author and protagonist of The Sun Does Shine. In Ray’s early life, he lives in Praco, Alabama. He loves his mom, has a strong Christian faith, and wants to find a nice girl to settle down with and marry. But on July 31, 1985, 29-year-old Ray’s life changes drastically when the police arrest him for a series of murders that Ray didn’t commit. Ray has a strong alibi for one of the incidents, and the supposed murder weapon, Ray’s mom’s gun, hasn’t been fired in years, but the authorities refuse to consider this. Over the course of the trial, Ray faces severe—and often overt—discrimination for being Black and poor. The police chief, Lietuenant Acker; Prosecutor Bob McGregor; and Ray’s first lawyer, Sheldon Perhacs, all make openly racist comments to him, and Ray’s poverty means that he has trouble paying for a proper defense. Because of the extremely racist treatment and poor defense he receives, Ray is sentenced to Alabama’s death row. For his first three years there, Ray doesn’t speak to anyone—he is consumed by despair, loses his belief in God, and even contemplates committing suicide. He feels helpless and tries to cope by daydreaming about traveling to interesting places and meeting interesting people. After three years, Ray realizes that he has been choosing to be angry and hateful, and that he should instead try to choose love and compassion by forming connections with the other inmates. He renews his faith in God and his hope that he will be able to get off death row—faith that is buoyed when Bryan Stevenson and other lawyers from the Equal Justice Initiative take over his case. After Ray spends 30 years on death row and makes an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, the State of Alabama finally drops the charges against him, illustrating the power of his optimism but also highlighting the injustice that he faced in the courts. After his release from prison, Ray acts as a voice for those still on death row, telling his story and advocating to abolish the death penalty.

Anthony Ray Hinton Quotes in The Sun Does Shine

The The Sun Does Shine quotes below are all either spoken by Anthony Ray Hinton or refer to Anthony Ray Hinton. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Discrimination and the Criminal Justice System Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

Hell, as far as the police and the prosecutor and the judge and even my own defense attorney were concerned, I was born guilty. Black, poor, without a father most of my life, one of ten children—it was actually pretty amazing I had made it to the age of twenty-nine without a noose around my neck. But justice is a funny thing, and in Alabama, justice isn’t blind. She knows the color of your skin, your education level, and how much money you have in the bank. I may not have had any money, but I had enough education to understand exactly how justice was working in this trial and exactly how it was going to turn out. The good old boys had traded in their white robes for black robes, but it was still a lynching.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker), Sheldon Perhacs, Prosecutor Bob McGregor, Judge Garrett
Page Number: 7
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

I took a deep breath. I knew I had a choice. Looking up at that sky, I knew I could get angry or I could have some faith. It was always a choice. I could easily have been angry, and maybe I should have been angry. This was God’s country, and I chose instead to love every single shade of blue that the sky wanted to show me. And when I turned my head to the right, I could see what looked like ten different shades of green. This was real and true, and it reminded me that even when you are flat on your back on the ground, there is beauty if you look for it.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker), Lester
Page Number: 31
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

Some days, I would go up to Maine to eat lobster drenched in warm butter, and other days, I would go swimming in Key West, Florida. In my mind, I would travel anywhere but into that black, dark pit where every breath was full of float dust that brought coal and rock and dirt into your lungs where it settled in and took root as if to punish you for disturbing it in the first place.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Sun, Books and Stories
Page Number: 35
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

“You know, I don’t care whether you did or didn’t do it. In fact, I believe you didn’t do it. But it doesn’t matter. If you didn’t do it, one of your brothers did. And you’re going to take the rap. You want to know why?”

I just shook my head.

“I can give you five reasons why they are going to convict you. Do you want to know what they are?”

I shook my head, no, but he continued.

“Number one, you’re black. Number two, a white man gonna say you shot him. Number three, you’re gonna have a white district attorney. Number four, you’re gonna have a white judge. And number five, you’re gonna have an all-white jury.”

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker), Lieutenant Acker (speaker)
Page Number: 65
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

“Would it make a difference if I told you I was innocent?”

“Listen, all y’all always doing something and saying you’re innocent.”

I dropped my hand. So that’s how it was going to be. I was pretty sure that when he said “all y’all,” he wasn’t talking about ex-cons or former coal miners or Geminis or even those accused of capital murder.

I needed him, so I had no choice but to let it slide. I had to believe that he believed me.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker), Sheldon Perhacs (speaker), Lieutenant Acker
Page Number: 70
Explanation and Analysis:

“I’ve been reading the papers. You see that there’s been other holdups? Other managers getting robbed at closing? I definitely can’t be doing that when I’m locked in here.”

“Yeah, I’ll look into it. They’re only paying me $1,000 for this, and hell, I eat $1,000 for breakfast.” He laughed, but it wasn’t funny.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker), Sheldon Perhacs (speaker)
Page Number: 79
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

I could do nothing but lay my head down in my arms and cry. I knew at that moment, I was going to be convicted of murder. I was innocent. And my one-eyed expert had just handed the prosecution a guilty verdict.

Nothing mattered anymore.

It took the jury two hours to find me guilty.

It took them forty-five minutes to determine my punishment.

Death.

In that moment, I felt my whole life shatter into a million jagged pieces around me. The world was fractured and broken, and everything good in me broke with it.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker), Sheldon Perhacs, Andrew Payne
Page Number: 95
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

“God will fix this,” she kept saying. “God can do everything but fail, baby. God is going to fix this right up for you.”

“Yes, Mama,” I said, and I could see one of the guards look surprised at hearing me speak. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I was done with God. God didn’t live in this place. If there was a God and he thought it was okay to send me to hell while I was still alive, well, then, he wasn’t my God. Not anymore. Not ever again.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker), Buhlar Hinton/Ray’s Mom (speaker)
Page Number: 109
Explanation and Analysis:

I didn’t want to be known as inmate Z468. I was Anthony Ray Hinton. People called me Ray. I used to love to laugh. I had a name and a life and a home, and I wanted it so bad, the wanting had a taste. I wasn’t going to survive here. I felt like eventually I would hollow out so completely, I would just disappear into a kind of nothingness. They were all trying to kill me, and I was going to escape. I had no other choice.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker)
Page Number: 115
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

I didn’t know Michael Lindsey, but I wanted him to know he wasn’t alone. I wanted him to know that I saw him and knew him and his life meant something and so did his death. We yelled until the lights stopped flickering and the generator that powered the electric chair turned off. I banged on the bars until the smell of Michael Lindsey’s death reached me, and then I got in my bunk and I pulled the blanket over my head and I wept. I cried for a man who had to die alone, and I cried for whoever was next to die.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker)
Page Number: 126
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

I wondered why it is that the cries of another human being—whether it’s a baby or a woman in grief or a man in pain—can touch us in ways we don’t expect. I wasn’t expecting to have my heart break that night. I wasn’t expecting to end three years of silence. It was a revelation to realize that I wasn’t the only man on death row. I was born with the same gift from God we are all born with—the impulse to reach out and lessen the suffering of another human being. It was a gift, and we each had a choice whether to use this gift or not.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker)
Page Number: 147
Explanation and Analysis:

It was silent for a few moments, and then the most amazing thing happened. On a dark night, in what must surely be the most desolate and dehumanizing place on earth, a man laughed. A real laugh. And with that laughter, I realized that the State of Alabama could steal my future and my freedom, but they couldn’t steal my soul or my humanity. And they most certainly couldn’t steal my sense of humor. I missed my family. I missed Lester. But sometimes you have to make family where you find family, or you die in isolation. I wasn’t ready to die. I wasn’t going to make it that easy on them. I was going to find another way to do my time. Whatever time I had left.

Everything, I realized, is a choice.

And spending your days waiting to die is no way to live.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker), Buhlar Hinton/Ray’s Mom, Lester
Page Number: 148
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes

Time was a funny and strange and fluid thing, and I was going to bend it and shape it so that it wasn’t my enemy. Someday I was going to walk out of here, but until then, I was going to use my mind to travel the world. I had so many places to go, and people to see, and things to learn.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker), Santha Sonenberg
Page Number: 160
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

We weren’t a collection of innocent victims. Many of the guys I laughed with had raped women and murdered children and sliced innocent people up for the fun of it or because they were high on drugs or desperate for money and never thought beyond the next moment. The outside world called them monsters. They called all of us monsters. But I didn’t know any monsters on the row. I knew guys named Larry and Henry and Victor and Jesse. I knew Vernon and Willie and Jimmy. Not monsters. Guys with names who didn’t have mothers who loved them or anyone who had ever shown them a kindness that was even close to love. Guys who were born broken or had been broken by life. Guys who had been abused as children and had their minds and their hearts warped by cruelty and violence and isolation long before they ever stood in front of a judge and a jury.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker), Henry Hays, Santha Sonenberg, Jesse Morrison, Victor Kennedy, Larry Heath, Jimmy Dill
Page Number: 167
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

We were transported, and just as I could travel the world and have tea with the Queen of England, I watched these men be transported in their minds for a small chunk of time. It was a vacation from the row—and everyone was a part of book club, even before the seven of us had our first official meeting.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker)
Related Symbols: Books and Stories
Page Number: 189
Explanation and Analysis:

“I’m going to tell the world about how there was men in here that mattered. That cared about each other and the world. That were learning how to look at things differently.”

“You’re going to tell it on the mountain, Ray?” Jesse asked. The other guys laughed.

“I’m going to tell it on every single mountain there is. I’m going to push that boulder right on up and over that giant, and I’m going to stand at the top of that hill, and on the top of every mountain I can find, and I’m going to tell it. I’m going to tell my story, and I’m going to tell your story. Hell, maybe I will even write a book and tell it like that.”

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker), Jesse Morrison (speaker)
Related Symbols: Books and Stories
Page Number: 197
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

Compassion doesn’t know what color you are, and I think Henry felt more love from the black men on death row than he ever did at a KKK meeting or from his own father and mother.

We had met a few more times in book club and had read Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Uncle Tom’s Cabin. All the books talked about race in the South, and Henry at first had shied away from the subject, almost pretending not to know how unfairly blacks were treated until we called him out on it. He was ashamed of how he had been brought up and ashamed of the beliefs that had brought him to the row. “You never knew what a person could grow up to become,” he’d say.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker), Henry Hays (speaker)
Page Number: 203
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 18 Quotes

Some days, I could see he was tired, and I wondered about the wear on a person when so many lives depend on what you do each day. He carried a big burden, and it wasn’t just mine. He spoke of justice and of mercy and of a system that was so broken it locked up children and the mentally ill and the innocent. “No one is beyond redemption,” he would say. No one is undeserving of their own life or their own potential to change. He had such compassion for victims and for perpetrators, and an intolerance and even anger for those in power who abused that power.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker), Bryan Stevenson, Henry Hays, Sheldon Perhacs
Page Number: 221
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

When you took a life, it didn’t bring back a life. It didn’t undo what was done. It wasn’t logical. We were just creating an endless chain of death and killing, every link connected to the next. It was barbaric. No baby is born a murderer. No toddler dreams of being on death row someday. Every killer on death row was taught to be a killer—by parents, by a system, by the brutality of another brutalized person—but no one was born a killer. My friend Henry wasn’t born to hate. He was taught to hate, and to hate so much that killing was justified. No one was born to this one precious life to be locked in a cell and murdered. Not the innocent like me, but not the guilty either. Life was a gift given by God. I believed it should and could only be taken by God as well.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker), Henry Hays
Page Number: 235
Explanation and Analysis:

This isn’t your time to die, son. It’s not. You have work to do. You have to prove to them that my baby is no killer. You have to show them. You are a beacon. You are the light. Don’t you listen to that fool devil telling you to give up. I didn’t raise no child of mine to give up when things get tough. Your life isn’t your life to take. It belongs to God. You have work to do. Hard work. I’m going to talk at you all night long if I have to and all day and all night again, and I will never stop until you know who you are. You were not born to die in this cell. God has a purpose for you. He has a purpose for all of us. I’ve served my purpose.

Related Characters: Buhlar Hinton/Ray’s Mom (speaker), Anthony Ray Hinton
Related Symbols: The Sun
Page Number: 253
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 20 Quotes

Alabama’s death penalty is a lie. It is a perverse monument to inequality, to how some lives matter and others do not. It is a violent example of how we protect and value the rich and abandon and devalue the poor. It is a grim, disturbing shadow cast by the legacy of racial apartheid used to condemn the disfavored among us. It’s the symbol elected officials hold up to strengthen their tough-on-crime reputations while distracting us from the causes of violence. The death penalty is an enemy of grace, redemption and all who value life and recognize that each person is more than their worst act.

Related Characters: Bryan Stevenson (speaker), Anthony Ray Hinton, Judge Garrett
Page Number: 266
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 23 Quotes

I felt a flash of fear, and then I thought about the guys on the row. They would be watching the news. They would be seeing my release. […]

I closed my eyes, and I lifted my face to the sky. I said a prayer for my mama. I thanked God. I opened my eyes, and I looked at the cameras. There had been so much darkness for so long. So many dark days and dark nights. But no more. I had lived in a place where the sun refused to shine. Not anymore. Not ever again.

“The sun does shine,” I said, and then I looked at both Lester and Bryan—two men who had saved me—each in their own way. “The sun does shine,” I said again.

And then the tears began to fall.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker), Bryan Stevenson, Buhlar Hinton/Ray’s Mom, Lester
Related Symbols: The Sun
Page Number: 294-295
Explanation and Analysis:
Afterword Quotes

Read the names out loud.
After every tenth name, say, “Innocent.”
Add your son or your daughter’s name to the list. Or your brother or your mother or your father’s name to the list.
Add my name to the list.
Add your own.
The death penalty is broken, and you are either part of the death squad or you are banging on the bars.
Choose.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker)
Page Number: 306
Explanation and Analysis:
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Anthony Ray Hinton Quotes in The Sun Does Shine

The The Sun Does Shine quotes below are all either spoken by Anthony Ray Hinton or refer to Anthony Ray Hinton. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Discrimination and the Criminal Justice System Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

Hell, as far as the police and the prosecutor and the judge and even my own defense attorney were concerned, I was born guilty. Black, poor, without a father most of my life, one of ten children—it was actually pretty amazing I had made it to the age of twenty-nine without a noose around my neck. But justice is a funny thing, and in Alabama, justice isn’t blind. She knows the color of your skin, your education level, and how much money you have in the bank. I may not have had any money, but I had enough education to understand exactly how justice was working in this trial and exactly how it was going to turn out. The good old boys had traded in their white robes for black robes, but it was still a lynching.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker), Sheldon Perhacs, Prosecutor Bob McGregor, Judge Garrett
Page Number: 7
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

I took a deep breath. I knew I had a choice. Looking up at that sky, I knew I could get angry or I could have some faith. It was always a choice. I could easily have been angry, and maybe I should have been angry. This was God’s country, and I chose instead to love every single shade of blue that the sky wanted to show me. And when I turned my head to the right, I could see what looked like ten different shades of green. This was real and true, and it reminded me that even when you are flat on your back on the ground, there is beauty if you look for it.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker), Lester
Page Number: 31
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

Some days, I would go up to Maine to eat lobster drenched in warm butter, and other days, I would go swimming in Key West, Florida. In my mind, I would travel anywhere but into that black, dark pit where every breath was full of float dust that brought coal and rock and dirt into your lungs where it settled in and took root as if to punish you for disturbing it in the first place.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Sun, Books and Stories
Page Number: 35
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

“You know, I don’t care whether you did or didn’t do it. In fact, I believe you didn’t do it. But it doesn’t matter. If you didn’t do it, one of your brothers did. And you’re going to take the rap. You want to know why?”

I just shook my head.

“I can give you five reasons why they are going to convict you. Do you want to know what they are?”

I shook my head, no, but he continued.

“Number one, you’re black. Number two, a white man gonna say you shot him. Number three, you’re gonna have a white district attorney. Number four, you’re gonna have a white judge. And number five, you’re gonna have an all-white jury.”

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker), Lieutenant Acker (speaker)
Page Number: 65
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

“Would it make a difference if I told you I was innocent?”

“Listen, all y’all always doing something and saying you’re innocent.”

I dropped my hand. So that’s how it was going to be. I was pretty sure that when he said “all y’all,” he wasn’t talking about ex-cons or former coal miners or Geminis or even those accused of capital murder.

I needed him, so I had no choice but to let it slide. I had to believe that he believed me.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker), Sheldon Perhacs (speaker), Lieutenant Acker
Page Number: 70
Explanation and Analysis:

“I’ve been reading the papers. You see that there’s been other holdups? Other managers getting robbed at closing? I definitely can’t be doing that when I’m locked in here.”

“Yeah, I’ll look into it. They’re only paying me $1,000 for this, and hell, I eat $1,000 for breakfast.” He laughed, but it wasn’t funny.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker), Sheldon Perhacs (speaker)
Page Number: 79
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

I could do nothing but lay my head down in my arms and cry. I knew at that moment, I was going to be convicted of murder. I was innocent. And my one-eyed expert had just handed the prosecution a guilty verdict.

Nothing mattered anymore.

It took the jury two hours to find me guilty.

It took them forty-five minutes to determine my punishment.

Death.

In that moment, I felt my whole life shatter into a million jagged pieces around me. The world was fractured and broken, and everything good in me broke with it.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker), Sheldon Perhacs, Andrew Payne
Page Number: 95
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

“God will fix this,” she kept saying. “God can do everything but fail, baby. God is going to fix this right up for you.”

“Yes, Mama,” I said, and I could see one of the guards look surprised at hearing me speak. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I was done with God. God didn’t live in this place. If there was a God and he thought it was okay to send me to hell while I was still alive, well, then, he wasn’t my God. Not anymore. Not ever again.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker), Buhlar Hinton/Ray’s Mom (speaker)
Page Number: 109
Explanation and Analysis:

I didn’t want to be known as inmate Z468. I was Anthony Ray Hinton. People called me Ray. I used to love to laugh. I had a name and a life and a home, and I wanted it so bad, the wanting had a taste. I wasn’t going to survive here. I felt like eventually I would hollow out so completely, I would just disappear into a kind of nothingness. They were all trying to kill me, and I was going to escape. I had no other choice.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker)
Page Number: 115
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

I didn’t know Michael Lindsey, but I wanted him to know he wasn’t alone. I wanted him to know that I saw him and knew him and his life meant something and so did his death. We yelled until the lights stopped flickering and the generator that powered the electric chair turned off. I banged on the bars until the smell of Michael Lindsey’s death reached me, and then I got in my bunk and I pulled the blanket over my head and I wept. I cried for a man who had to die alone, and I cried for whoever was next to die.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker)
Page Number: 126
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

I wondered why it is that the cries of another human being—whether it’s a baby or a woman in grief or a man in pain—can touch us in ways we don’t expect. I wasn’t expecting to have my heart break that night. I wasn’t expecting to end three years of silence. It was a revelation to realize that I wasn’t the only man on death row. I was born with the same gift from God we are all born with—the impulse to reach out and lessen the suffering of another human being. It was a gift, and we each had a choice whether to use this gift or not.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker)
Page Number: 147
Explanation and Analysis:

It was silent for a few moments, and then the most amazing thing happened. On a dark night, in what must surely be the most desolate and dehumanizing place on earth, a man laughed. A real laugh. And with that laughter, I realized that the State of Alabama could steal my future and my freedom, but they couldn’t steal my soul or my humanity. And they most certainly couldn’t steal my sense of humor. I missed my family. I missed Lester. But sometimes you have to make family where you find family, or you die in isolation. I wasn’t ready to die. I wasn’t going to make it that easy on them. I was going to find another way to do my time. Whatever time I had left.

Everything, I realized, is a choice.

And spending your days waiting to die is no way to live.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker), Buhlar Hinton/Ray’s Mom, Lester
Page Number: 148
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes

Time was a funny and strange and fluid thing, and I was going to bend it and shape it so that it wasn’t my enemy. Someday I was going to walk out of here, but until then, I was going to use my mind to travel the world. I had so many places to go, and people to see, and things to learn.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker), Santha Sonenberg
Page Number: 160
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

We weren’t a collection of innocent victims. Many of the guys I laughed with had raped women and murdered children and sliced innocent people up for the fun of it or because they were high on drugs or desperate for money and never thought beyond the next moment. The outside world called them monsters. They called all of us monsters. But I didn’t know any monsters on the row. I knew guys named Larry and Henry and Victor and Jesse. I knew Vernon and Willie and Jimmy. Not monsters. Guys with names who didn’t have mothers who loved them or anyone who had ever shown them a kindness that was even close to love. Guys who were born broken or had been broken by life. Guys who had been abused as children and had their minds and their hearts warped by cruelty and violence and isolation long before they ever stood in front of a judge and a jury.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker), Henry Hays, Santha Sonenberg, Jesse Morrison, Victor Kennedy, Larry Heath, Jimmy Dill
Page Number: 167
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

We were transported, and just as I could travel the world and have tea with the Queen of England, I watched these men be transported in their minds for a small chunk of time. It was a vacation from the row—and everyone was a part of book club, even before the seven of us had our first official meeting.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker)
Related Symbols: Books and Stories
Page Number: 189
Explanation and Analysis:

“I’m going to tell the world about how there was men in here that mattered. That cared about each other and the world. That were learning how to look at things differently.”

“You’re going to tell it on the mountain, Ray?” Jesse asked. The other guys laughed.

“I’m going to tell it on every single mountain there is. I’m going to push that boulder right on up and over that giant, and I’m going to stand at the top of that hill, and on the top of every mountain I can find, and I’m going to tell it. I’m going to tell my story, and I’m going to tell your story. Hell, maybe I will even write a book and tell it like that.”

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker), Jesse Morrison (speaker)
Related Symbols: Books and Stories
Page Number: 197
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

Compassion doesn’t know what color you are, and I think Henry felt more love from the black men on death row than he ever did at a KKK meeting or from his own father and mother.

We had met a few more times in book club and had read Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Uncle Tom’s Cabin. All the books talked about race in the South, and Henry at first had shied away from the subject, almost pretending not to know how unfairly blacks were treated until we called him out on it. He was ashamed of how he had been brought up and ashamed of the beliefs that had brought him to the row. “You never knew what a person could grow up to become,” he’d say.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker), Henry Hays (speaker)
Page Number: 203
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 18 Quotes

Some days, I could see he was tired, and I wondered about the wear on a person when so many lives depend on what you do each day. He carried a big burden, and it wasn’t just mine. He spoke of justice and of mercy and of a system that was so broken it locked up children and the mentally ill and the innocent. “No one is beyond redemption,” he would say. No one is undeserving of their own life or their own potential to change. He had such compassion for victims and for perpetrators, and an intolerance and even anger for those in power who abused that power.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker), Bryan Stevenson, Henry Hays, Sheldon Perhacs
Page Number: 221
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

When you took a life, it didn’t bring back a life. It didn’t undo what was done. It wasn’t logical. We were just creating an endless chain of death and killing, every link connected to the next. It was barbaric. No baby is born a murderer. No toddler dreams of being on death row someday. Every killer on death row was taught to be a killer—by parents, by a system, by the brutality of another brutalized person—but no one was born a killer. My friend Henry wasn’t born to hate. He was taught to hate, and to hate so much that killing was justified. No one was born to this one precious life to be locked in a cell and murdered. Not the innocent like me, but not the guilty either. Life was a gift given by God. I believed it should and could only be taken by God as well.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker), Henry Hays
Page Number: 235
Explanation and Analysis:

This isn’t your time to die, son. It’s not. You have work to do. You have to prove to them that my baby is no killer. You have to show them. You are a beacon. You are the light. Don’t you listen to that fool devil telling you to give up. I didn’t raise no child of mine to give up when things get tough. Your life isn’t your life to take. It belongs to God. You have work to do. Hard work. I’m going to talk at you all night long if I have to and all day and all night again, and I will never stop until you know who you are. You were not born to die in this cell. God has a purpose for you. He has a purpose for all of us. I’ve served my purpose.

Related Characters: Buhlar Hinton/Ray’s Mom (speaker), Anthony Ray Hinton
Related Symbols: The Sun
Page Number: 253
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 20 Quotes

Alabama’s death penalty is a lie. It is a perverse monument to inequality, to how some lives matter and others do not. It is a violent example of how we protect and value the rich and abandon and devalue the poor. It is a grim, disturbing shadow cast by the legacy of racial apartheid used to condemn the disfavored among us. It’s the symbol elected officials hold up to strengthen their tough-on-crime reputations while distracting us from the causes of violence. The death penalty is an enemy of grace, redemption and all who value life and recognize that each person is more than their worst act.

Related Characters: Bryan Stevenson (speaker), Anthony Ray Hinton, Judge Garrett
Page Number: 266
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 23 Quotes

I felt a flash of fear, and then I thought about the guys on the row. They would be watching the news. They would be seeing my release. […]

I closed my eyes, and I lifted my face to the sky. I said a prayer for my mama. I thanked God. I opened my eyes, and I looked at the cameras. There had been so much darkness for so long. So many dark days and dark nights. But no more. I had lived in a place where the sun refused to shine. Not anymore. Not ever again.

“The sun does shine,” I said, and then I looked at both Lester and Bryan—two men who had saved me—each in their own way. “The sun does shine,” I said again.

And then the tears began to fall.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker), Bryan Stevenson, Buhlar Hinton/Ray’s Mom, Lester
Related Symbols: The Sun
Page Number: 294-295
Explanation and Analysis:
Afterword Quotes

Read the names out loud.
After every tenth name, say, “Innocent.”
Add your son or your daughter’s name to the list. Or your brother or your mother or your father’s name to the list.
Add my name to the list.
Add your own.
The death penalty is broken, and you are either part of the death squad or you are banging on the bars.
Choose.

Related Characters: Anthony Ray Hinton (speaker)
Page Number: 306
Explanation and Analysis: