Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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I write in a small office at home.
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I was in New York. I had been doing theater for many years, and then I got hired to a little part - they weren't calling it an extra, but I didn't have lines. It was a 'featured' part.
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I didn't grow up listening to The Smiths, but now I am a fan. I love his music and listened to so much of it for the film. It's not a regular biopic; they picked a part of his life that people don't really know about. You learn what informs his lyrics.
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All performers get on stage because they need to feel love from an audience. I might appear confident, but those three seconds before I get out there, I'm a mess. But I have to take the risk; otherwise, I'd be miserable and would feel like I wasn't seeing through my personal destiny.
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The foundation of family - that's where it all begins for me.
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I could live very quietly, do advertising to earn money.
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Without being aware, I think I was being indoctrinated into what was called Vitalism, the idea that what makes life worth living, the good life, consists of accepting challenges, solving problems, discovery, personal growth, personal change.
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I have always believed that when you're feeling sorry for yourself, the best thing to do is help someone else.
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Celebrities and 'famous' people are just regular folks. I know, it's a shocking and potentially dangerous statement.
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All politicians should have 3 hats - one to throw into the ring, one to talk through, and one to pull rabbits out of if elected.
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The old movie stars like Bogart, James Cagney, Jimmy Stewart, they weren't this gorgeous, striking six-foot man who's rippled with muscles.
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If I stayed in London, I probably would have gotten more work. I've never wanted to be thought of as an 'It' girl, someone who rides on the coattails of my mother.
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I want to have my desperate need for personal success shrunk, not enlarged.
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I had to create some good work habits and attitude.
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I had no interest in sports so I didn't make friends in that traditional way where kids are in public school and they go and they join clubs, and play sports. So I kind of had to find my own way to make friends and get attention and so I just was the class clown.
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Strange bonds of trust and self-deception tend to grow between journalists and their subjects.
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Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.
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When Edward Gibbon was writing about the fall of the Roman Empire in the late 18th century, he could argue that transportation hadn't changed since ancient times. An imperial messenger on the Roman roads could get from Rome to London even faster in A.D. 100 than in 1750. But by 1850, and even more obviously today, all of that has changed.
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In a play, the director is God, and I'm a great arguer. Rather boringly so, I think, about trying different things.
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I've personally backed off from direct political involvement.
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Okay, so maybe you are the world’s authority on the art of making butter sculptures of dead presidents’ heads, but if you want to sell a book on the subject you’ll have to do more than know your stuff. You’ll need to make the idea sound sexy, or cool, or hot, or timely, or cute, or something that instantly makes it clear to people why the world needs your book.
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There's no way to understand housing as it exists today without federal policy.
