Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Quotes
In a typical history book, black Americans are mentioned in the context of slavery or civil rights. There's so much more to the story.
Quotes to Explore
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I've planned book tours for myself, whether or not anybody wants to hear what I have to say. I've weighed in on things like what the cover looks like, what the copy looks like, how it's going to be promoted - just every aspect of it.
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Emotions come first, and in the most direct sense: you first have an emotion and then have a feeling. But also first in the history of the human race, for the ability to have emotions long preceded the ability to have feelings.
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Besides black art, there is only automation and mechanization.
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One half who graduate from college never read another book.
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Music history has flowed under the bridges for many years.
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Good fiction is about asserting the beauties of the world, inventing a new, positive thing. Where am I going to get that? And it should be original; it should not be cliched. So the way I looked at history was not to accuse it of failure.
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I enjoy it too much - even if I knew I'd never get a book published, I would still write. I enjoy the experience of getting thoughts and ideas and plots and characters organised into this narrative framework.
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My house is filled with books, most of which I have read, some of which I intend to eventually get to. I'm always reading at least one work of fiction and one work of non-fiction simultaneously. Whatever mood I'm in, there's always a book nearby to suit it.
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To be black in the Baltimore of my youth was to be naked before the elements of the world.
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I have become infected, now that I see how beautifully a book is coming out of all this.
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Black people can be the most conservative, the most discriminating. Especially among ourselves. It wasn't white people who said all black men have to wear baggy jeans.
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You have to understand that while I pre-plot the meta story of a given book, I often have no idea of what will happen on the next page, let alone the next chapter. That's what makes it fun for me; I write the books the same way many people read them.
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It's easier to release an ebook than a print book.
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I want a platform that, like a book or a magazine, I can carry into the bath or leave at the beach.
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There is a wide, yawning black infinity. In every direction, the extension is endless; the sensation of depth is overwhelming. And the darkness is immortal. Where light exists, it is pure, blazing, fierce; but light exists almost nowhere, and the blackness itself is also pure and blazing and fierce.
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Any character that can't be kept straight, to me, isn't a character who should be in the book – you know, anyone not vivid enough to have a claim on my attention.
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I don't really know what the Great American Novel is. I like the idea that there could be one now, and I wouldn't object if someone thought it was mine, but I don't claim to have written that - I just wrote my book.
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After two years at UCLA, I decided to leave. I was convinced that no amount of education would help a black man get a job.
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'Each man kills the things he loves'. I recognise that in myself, in relationships, even with guitars, beautiful things that I've had and wilfully destroyed.
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I could imagine it in a way that felt like remembering.
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For the past two years, the only thing the 'Idol' machine has been doing has been maliciously attacking my name.
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Honorable beginnings should serve to awaken curiosity, not to heighten people's expectations. We are much better off when reality surpasses our expectations, and something turns out better than we thought it would.
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Only strength can cooperate. Weakness can only beg.
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In a typical history book, black Americans are mentioned in the context of slavery or civil rights. There's so much more to the story.
