Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
I love America the way I love my family - I was born into it. And there's no escape out of it.
Quotes to Explore
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I write in a small office at home.
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Islam means peace.
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In 'A Boy's Own Story' and 'Jack Holmes and His Friend,' my idea was to take someone totally different from my real self and, at the same time, to assign to him my own life trajectory.
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I sometimes try to think of my life as an Iranian, and it is hard to imagine. I am grateful for the life I have had in America and all the amazing opportunities and experiences it has given me. But there is a spirit in Iranians I can see that is unbounded by geography.
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As a kid, I was always very thin, and I kind of didn't know that I was skinny.
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History must share with reading, writing and arithmetic first rank as the most important subjects in the curriculum. Understanding the issues on which citizens of a republic are expected to vote is impossible without an understanding of the past.
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If you don't want to get bored with what you're doing, you have to change.
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I had just turned 10-years-old when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and plunged America into World War II.
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Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.
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America is another name for opportunity.
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When I was in high school, I started getting into Japanese wrestling. For me to watch those matches, I had to order VHS tapes through catalogues, and these tapes were, like, $20 each.
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I'd never even been to Wrigley Field. I never even enjoyed baseball that much, but I loved being there, the crowd was lovely, and they all sang with me!
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My friends like to play as me in the baseball games, and they call to tell me about every bag I steal. And you know, every time a new game comes out, I check to make sure my speed is up to par. But to me, when you talk video games, you're talking 'Madden.'
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I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.
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I've always had a passion for music, but I never saw me as a musician for a living. I never thought that I could make a living. It never dawned on me.
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I went to a lot of college camps when I was younger... You just admire those players because they're at a higher level than you at that time.
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I go home, and I'm a blob. I just lay there and don't do anything - lay by the pool with the other husbands while the wives work. It's fantastic. It's really good. That's kind of our life at home.
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I was outraged to learn that the president wanted to outsource operations at some American ports to the United Arab Emirates.
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I traveled to Ireland to research 'Sandcastles,' to visit the coastline where my ancestors looked toward America, the tiny town they once loved so much, and the docks from which they sailed toward their dreams of building a better life for their family. The answers I found on that journey are woven through the novel.
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I get a lot of letters, mostly from family members who have been affected by cancer rather than young people themselves. I reply to them all.
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My mother had morning sickness after I was born.
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To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.
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It's funny: when I set out to create the world of 'California,' I didn't give the type of apocalypse much thought... I simply set my two characters, Cal and Frida, in a depleted world and moved through it intuitively.
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I love America the way I love my family - I was born into it. And there's no escape out of it.
