12 Years a Slave Quotes

Edwin Epps: If something rubs you wrongly, I offer you the opportunity to speak on it.
Bass: [exhales] Well, you ask plainly, so I will tell you plainly. What amused me just then was your concern for my wellbeing in this heat when, quite frankly, the condition of your laborers...
Edwin Epps: The condition of my laborers?

Bass: It is horrid.
Edwin Epps: The hell?
[chuckles]
Bass: It's all wrong. All wrong, Mr. Epps.
Edwin Epps: They ain't hired help. They're my property.
Bass: You say that with pride.
Edwin Epps: I say it as fact.
Bass: If this

conversation concerns what is factual and what is not, then it must be said that there is no justice nor righteousness in their slavery. But you do open up an interesting question. What right have you to your niggers, when you come down to the point?
Edwin Epps: What right?
Bass: Mmm
Edwin Epps: I bought 'em. I paid for 'em.

Bass: Well, of course you did, and the law says you have the right to hold a nigger. But begging the law's pardon, it lies. Suppose they pass a law taking away your liberty, making you a slave. Suppose.
Edwin Epps: That ain't a supposable case.
Bass: Laws change, Epps. Universal truths are constant. It is a fact, a plain and

simple fact, that what is true and right is true and right for all. White and black alike.
Edwin Epps: You comparing me to a nigger, Bass?
Bass: I'm only asking, in the eyes of God, what is the difference?
Edwin Epps: You might as well ask what the difference is between a white man and a baboon.
[chuckles]

Edwin Epps: I seen one of them critters in Orleans. Know just as much as any nigger I got.
Bass: Listen, Epps, these niggers are human beings. If they are allowed to climb no higher than brute animals, you and men like you will have to answer for it. There is an ill, Mr. Epps. A fearful ill resting upon this nation. And there will be a day of reckoning yet.

Robert: I say we fight.
Solomon Northup: The crew is fairly small. If it were well planned, I believe they could be strong armed.
Clemens: Three can't stand against a whole crew. The rest here are niggers, born and bred slaves. Niggers ain't got the stomach for a fight, not a damn one.
Robert: All I know, we

get where we travelling we'll wish we'd died trying.
Clemens: Survival is not about certain death, it is about keeping your head down.
Solomon Northup: Days ago I was with my family, in my home. Now you tell me all is lost. "Tell no one who I really am" if I want to survive. I don't want to survive, I want to live.

Edwin Epps: [Having awakened Solomon in the middle of the night, Epps coaxes him outside, puts his arm around him as if consoling a friend, and guides him into the woods] Well, boy. I understand I've got a larned nigger that writes letters and tries to get white fellows to mail 'em. Well, Armsby tol' me today the devil was among my niggers. That I had one that needed close

watchin' or he would run away. When I axed him why, he said you come over to him and waked him up in the middle of the night and wanted him to carry a letter to Marksville. What have yah got to say to that?
Solomon Northup: There is no truth in it.
Edwin Epps: You say.
Solomon Northup: How could I write a letter without ink or

paper? There is nobody I want to write to 'cause I hain't got no friends living as I know of. That Armsby is a lying drunken fellow. You know this, just as you know that I am constant in truth. Now, master, I can see what that Armsby is after, plain enough. Didn't he want you to hire him for an overseer? That's it. He wants to make you believe we're all going to run away and then he thinks you'll

hire an overseer to watch us. He believes you are soft soap. He's given to such talk. I believe he's just made this story out of whole cloth, 'cause he wants to get a situation. It's all a lie, master, you may depend on't. It's all a lie.
Edwin Epps: [reveals a pocket knife he'd had pressed against Solomon's gut the entire time] I'll be damned... Were he not free and white,

Platt. Were he not free and white.

Ford: I believe Tibeats is skulkin' about the premises somewhere. He wants you dead, and he will attempt to have you so. It's no longer safe for you here. And I don't believe you will remain passive if Tibeats attacks. I have transferred my debt to Edwin Epps. He will take charge of you.
Solomon Northup: Master Ford, you must know; I am not a slave.

Ford: I cannot hear that.
Solomon Northup: Before I came to you I was a free man.
Ford: I am trying to save your life! And... I have a debt to be mindful of. That, now, is to Edwin Epps. He is a hard man. Prides himself on being a "nigger breaker." But truthfully I could find no others who would have you. You've made a reputation of

yourself. Whatever your circumstances, you are an exceptional nigger, Platt. I fear no good will come of it.

Solomon Northup: [Epps has just whipped Patsey within an inch of her life] Thou devil! Sooner or later, somewhere in the course of eternal justice thou shalt answer for this sin!
Edwin Epps: No sin! There is no sin! A man does how he pleases with his property. At the moment, Platt, I am of great pleasure. You be goddamn careful I don't come to wantin' to

lightenin' my mood no further.

Patsey: I went to Massa Shaw's plantation!
Edwin Epps: Ya admit it.
Patsey: Freely. And you know why?
[she produces a piece of soap from the pocket of her dress]
Patsey: I got this from Mistress Shaw. Mistress Epps won't even grant me no soap ta clean with. Stink so much I make myself gag. Five hundred

pounds 'a cotton day in, day out. More than any man here. And 'fo that I will be clean; that all I ax. Dis here what I went to Shaw's 'fo.
Edwin Epps: You lie...
Patsey: The Lord knows that's all.
Edwin Epps: You lie!
Patsey: And you blind wit yer own covetousness. I don't lie, Massa. If you kill me,

I'll stick ta that.
Edwin Epps: Oh, I'll fetch you down. I'll learn you to go to Shaw's. I'll take the starch outta ya. Treach, go get some line.

Tibeats: [singing] Nigger run, nigger flew/Nigger tore his shirt in two/Run, run, the pattyroller git you/Run nigger run, well ya better get away. That's right, like you mean it. Nigger run, run so fast/Stove his head in a hornet's nest/Run, run, the pattyroller git you/Run nigger, run, well ya bette git away/Run, nigger, run, the pattyroller git you/Run nigger run, well ya better

git away/Some folks say a nigger don't steal/well I caught three in my cornfield/One had a bushel and one had a peck/and one had a rope being hung around his neck/Run nigger run/ the pattyroller git you/Run nigger run, well ya better get away/Hey, Mr. Pattyroller, don't catch me/Catch that nigger behind that tree!/Run nigger run, the pattyroller get you/Run nigger run, well ya better get away.

Ford: [Ford is attempting to buy Eliza, who begs to allow her daughter to come too. Her son having just been sold] How much for the little girl? You have no need for her. One so young will bring you no profit.
Freeman: I will not sell the girl. There's heaps 'n piles of money to be made off her. She is a beauty. One of the regular bloods. None of your

thick-lipped, bullet headed, cotton picking niggers.
Ford: Her child, man. For God's sake, are you not sentimental in the least?
Freeman: My sentimentality stretches the length of a coin. Do you want the lot, Mr. Ford, or do you pass on them all?
Ford: I will take the ones Platt and Eliza.

Edwin Epps: "And that servant which knew his Lord's will... which knew his Lord's will and prepared not himself... prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes..." D'ye hear that? "Stripes." That nigger that don't take care, that don't obey his lord - that's his master - d'ye see? - that 'ere nigger shall be beaten with many stripes.

Now, "many" signifies a great many. Forty, a hundred, a hundred and fifty lashes... that's Scripture.

Burch: Well, my boy, how yah feel now?
Solomon Northup: I am Solomon Northup. I am a free man; a resident of Saratoga, New York. The residence also of my wife and children who are equally free. I have papers. You have no right whatsoever to detain me...
Burch: Yah not any...
Solomon Northup: And I promise you

- I promise - upon my liberation I will have satisfaction for this wrong.
Burch: Resolve this. Produce your papers.
[Solomon searches and finds no papers]
Burch: Yah no free man. And yah ain't from Saratoga. Yah from Georgia. Yah ain't a free man. Yah nuthin' but a Georgia runaway. Yah a runaway nigger from Georgia.

Solomon Northup: We need a sympathetic ear. If we have an opportunity to explain our situation...
Clemens: Who in your estimation is that sympathetic ear?
Solomon Northup: The two men I journeyed with. I'm certain they're making inquires at this very moment.
Clemens: I would be just as certain they are

counting the money paid for delivering you to this place.
Solomon Northup: They were not kidnappers. They were artists. Fellow performers.
Clemens: You know that? You know for certain who they were?
[Solomon cannot answer]
Clemens: How I reckon the situation: whatever past we had... well, that's done now. The reality to

come is us being transported southward. New Orleans if I were to venture. After we arrive, we'll be put to market. Beyond that... Well, once in a slave state I suppose there's only one outcome.