The Sun Does Shine Major and Minor Quotes

“Was . . . my life determined by being black and poor . . . in a South that didn’t . . . care to be civil in the wake of civil rights?” (Chapter 1, “Capital Offense”)

 —Anthony Ray Hinton

Analysis: From the opening pages of The Sun Does Shine, this quote expresses how Anthony Ray Hinton was a victim of a prejudicial justice system. Although Hinton had a prior criminal record that made his conviction more likely, he was never violent and never committed a violent crime. He considers whether his life would have been different if he had made different choices, but the reality is that just being poor and Black in Alabama made it likely he would be victimized in some way. Both race and lack of money are key factors in his conviction and imprisonment. The white judge and jury rule against him despite a lack of evidence tying him to the crimes, and having little money makes it impossible for him to afford qualified professionals to defend him in court. Lack of money also makes the appeals process difficult, and Hinton must eventually rely on pro bono attorneys from the Equal Justice Initiative. This quote is also important because it contradicts what Hinton’s mother taught him: to trust authority and believe in justice. Unfortunately, the justice system she believed in is a myth, and the reality is much more unfair.

“It’s strange what you can get used to.” (Chapter 2, “All American”)

—Anthony Ray Hinton

Analysis: As a young man, Hinton and his best friend, Lester Bailey, have no cars and thus must walk the long distance between their school and their homes. Because of racial discrimination, they are always in danger of being violently attacked or run over by white motorists. Therefore, when they see an unfamiliar car on the road, they hide in ditches until the car passes. Hinton makes this comment to Lester, speaking of how strange this routine is. What he doesn’t realize is that these words will echo many times while he’s incarcerated later in life. Despite the conditions of prison and life on death row, Hinton eventually adapts to them and even thrives, to an extent. Humans can adjust to and normalize even the most unspeakable conditions. On the reverse side, the perpetrators of injustice are also accustomed to such conditions, and prison guards can live their lives normally while enforcing inhuman punishments on inmates.

Following his release from prison after nearly 30 years behind bars, Hinton finds freedom strange and frightening. He is so accustomed to sleeping in a cell that at first he sleeps on a bathroom floor because it feels like home to him. His choice illustrates the human capacity to adjust to unnatural conditions.

“If you didn’t do it, then one of your brothers did.” (Chapter 5, “Premeditated Guilt”)

—Lieutenant Acker

Analysis: Lieutenant Acker represents a self-aware side of the racist Alabama justice system and makes clear that the truth is irrelevant where this unfair system is concerned. Unlike Prosecutor Bob McGregor, who assumes a sanctimonious posture toward Anthony Ray Hinton, Acker does not seem to hate Hinton. In fact, he admits Hinton is probably innocent but will be convicted because he is a Black man facing a white judge and jury.

However, even in admitting Hinton’s innocence, Lieutenant Acker also expresses his apathy toward this injustice. By saying that “one of your brothers did” the crime, he is suggesting kinship between Hinton and the Cooler Killer and possibly suggesting collective, community-based guilt, as if one Black man’s crime is every Black man’s crime. Acker is a willing participant in and upholder of a system he recognizes as unfair. Thus, Hinton speaks of Acker in his speech to the court and says that he is “praying for” Acker’s soul. Acker may not be as vitriolic as McGregor, but he still upholds the same racist system.

“It made me glad . . . I hadn’t known . . . Apollo Creed died . . . while Rocky stood by and watched.” (Chapter 6, “The Whole Truth”)

—Anthony Ray Hinton

Analysis: When Hinton’s trial begins, he wants a hero to save him, and he casts his public defender, Sheldon Perhacs, in the role. Because Perhacs’s athletic build and slicked hair give him the appearance of a “mobster or maybe even a boxer,” Hinton compares him to Sylvester Stallone’s (born 1946) character Rocky Balboa from the Rocky films. Meanwhile, Hinton imagines himself as Rocky’s rival-turned-friend Apollo Creed. He imagines Perhacs fighting for his freedom and doing everything he can. In reality, Perhacs puts in minimum effort and botches the defense, while complaining about the meager $1,000 he is paid to represent Hinton.

The comparison works in another sense. Much in the same way that Hinton has a naive, rose-tinted view of the justice system, he also has not seen Rocky IV (1985), in which Apollo dies while Rocky, serving as his cornerman, throws in the towel too late to save his life. Hinton wants to believe in an idealized view of the world where truth and human goodness will rescue him from injustice. Hinton’s legal salvation will only come 30 years later, thanks to Bryan Stevenson. When Hinton says he is “glad” he didn’t know about Apollo Creed’s fate, he is hinting that while his hope might have been foolish, it sustained him during a frightening and painful time.

“God may sit high, but he looks low.” (Chapter 11, “Waiting to Die”)

—Anthony Ray Hinton

Analysis: Hinton’s struggle with faith is the most important internal conflict in the memoir, as in his early years on death row he adopts a grim, fatalistic outlook. During this time, Hinton stays silent, not communicating with the guards or his fellow prisoners. Hinton is passive and withdrawn, hoping for a miracle while not believing any will come. Meanwhile, his friend Lester has married, and Hinton realizes the world is moving on without him. “God may sit high, but he wasn’t looking low,” he reflects. At the same time, another prisoner is crying and calling out to God. Hinton’s compassion is reawakened, and he breaks his three years of silence to ask if the other man is all right. As it turns out, the man’s mother has just died, and he is grieving. Hinton realizes that he still has a mother and that this man is worse off than he is. He also realizes he can still be compassionate and help others even from inside his cell. His compassion inspires the other inmates to offer their own condolences, leading to Hinton’s expressing these words.

Hinton’s remark, an inversion of his earlier thought that God “wasn’t looking low,” is as much addressed to himself as it is to the other inmates. Hinton has to remind himself after three years of fear and solitude that hope still exists in the world. The quote also suggests that although death row is a “low” place, it is not only evil and despair; some good things can happen there, such as the sudden outpouring of sympathy from condemned men to a man who has suffered a great loss.

“You never knew what a person could grow up to become.” (Chapter 16, “Shakedown”)

—Henry Hays

Analysis: Henry Hays is transformed during his time on death row, and this quote encapsulates how the former Klansman comes to understand the enormity of his crime. Convicted of lynching a Black boy, Henry’s racist parents, especially his father, brought him up to regard Black people as inferior and dangerous. However, after being befriended by Anthony Ray Hinton and other Black death row inmates, Henry changes and sees everything he was taught as a lie. As Hinton reflects, “Death row had been good for Henry,” and “death row had saved his soul.” 

When Henry expresses this thought, he is not only bemoaning the general oppression of Black people that limits their opportunities but also how his lynching cut short Michael Donald’s life. It’s also possible that Henry is reflecting on how his own life might have turned out differently had he not been raised to be racist. If he had never killed Michael Donald, he wouldn’t be on death row and might have lived a richer, fuller, less hate-filled life. Henry’s thoughts here show how racism harms not only its victims but also its perpetrators, an argument consistent with Hinton’s philosophy of forgiving and showing compassion even to evil people. Hinton can forgive Henry’s terrible crime and even learn to love him like a brother, just as he can forgive the judge and prosecutor for sentencing him to die.

“I want to hear every idea you have.” (Chapter 17, “God’s Best Lawyer”)

—Bryan Stevenson

Analysis: Unlike Anthony Ray Hinton’s previous attorneys, Bryan Stevenson befriends Hinton and shows a genuine emotional investment in his future. The other quality that sets him apart from the others, especially Perhacs, is that Stevenson takes Hinton’s ideas seriously and treats him as an equal. When Hinton works up to making a suggestion about their legal strategy, he’s nervous, remembering Perhacs’s dismissive comments when he tried to make suggestions. Stevenson, on the other hand, is eager to collaborate and to know Hinton’s full story. Hinton suggests they hire a white, racist, but honest expert whom the Alabama court will take seriously and believe, an idea which Stevenson accepts.

This first in-person meeting between the two men is the start of what will be a long friendship, a friendship only possible because of how Stevenson treats Hinton as he’s longed to be treated: not only as an innocent man but as an innocent man worthy of being heard. That Stevenson, as a Black man, also understands what it’s like not to be taken seriously or to be mistreated helps him empathize with Hinton. But ultimately, the trust he shows Hinton and his willingness to talk to him and not down to him make their friendship possible. By the end of the memoir, Hinton reflects that Stevenson is one of only two people he truly trusts.

“Hope can be a four-letter word in prison.” (Chapter 18, “Testing the Bullets”)

—Anthony Ray Hinton

Analysis: A “four-letter word” refers to an offensive word or concept. As such, within the context of prison, hope can be a dangerous or unsavory concept for prisoners. Here Hinton is expressing that although hope can sustain a person through difficult times, it is also a potential source of agony. A person who hopes for a better future can still be hurt when that hope is denied, whereas someone who gives up inures themselves to pain. Hinton describes hope as something that “can tease a man by staying close but just out of reach.” Early in his imprisonment and appeals process, Hinton still hoped he would be released or that the real killer would confess. Now, almost 15 years later, Hinton is encouraged by his new attorney’s competence and kindness but remains afraid of allowing that same hope to hurt him again. While he knows from experience that he needs to be patient, after each year in prison he “grieve[s] for the year [he] lost.” Despite his fear of letting hope hurt him, Hinton knows his case is in better hands with Stevenson, who allows him to have a voice in his own defense.

“We’re all guilty of something, and we’re all innocent at the same time.” (Chapter 21, “They Kill You on Thursdays”)

—Anthony Ray Hinton

Analysis: Anthony Ray Hinton, speaking to his friend Lester, comes to realize that guilt and innocence aren’t as simple as he once believed and that the truth can be muddled or ignored. At the time of his arrest, Hinton knew he had not committed the crime. He believed that the truth soon would come to light and that he’d be released. He certainly could not imagine being imprisoned on death row for almost 30 years. Decades later, Hinton has become wiser about how innocence and guilt work. He recognizes that many of the men on death row are not innocent and that some are vicious killers. Even so, he treats them with compassion and kindness, and many treat him the same way because they are like a “strange family.”

But Hinton also comes to see that people are not entirely guilty of their own actions, which are shaped by events out of their control and beliefs impressed upon them by others. His friend Henry is a good example, as Henry lynched a Black boy because of the racist beliefs taught to him by his parents. However, when Hinton says everyone is “guilty” of something, he is also speaking from desperation in a time of weakness. He has become so used to living in the prison that he wonders whether he was meant to live there and whether this is not a just punishment after all. What Hinton’s comment hints at, though, is that not all people behind bars are evil, while not everyone who lives on the other side of the bars is virtuous.

“We’re still just walking home together.” (Chapter 21, “They Kill You on Thursdays”)

—Lester Bailey

Analysis: Lester says this to Anthony Ray Hinton during a visit to Holman Prison. Hinton has begun to lose hope after a long struggle against the legal system, and Lester tries to reassure him. When he says the two of them are “walking home together,” he is at once eliding the situation (one of them is behind bars, the other free) but also alluding to their childhood when they protected each other. Lester has remained a faithful friend, and here he tries to convince Hinton to maintain that same faith in himself and his chance for vindication and freedom. While alluding to those childhood walks, Lester makes clear they’re “not kids anymore” and that rather than hide, like they hid from the unfamiliar cars, they’re going to stand up and fight together. This conversation is critical because it occurs shortly before Bryan Stevenson approaches Hinton with the idea of taking their case to the US Supreme Court, which is a major gamble. If not for Lester’s encouragement, Hinton might not have agreed to Stevenson’s idea and never have been released from prison.