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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A lot of my music is very roots-oriented, and that's country and soul. I've been in every roadhouse in the South, soaking in all of that... Nashville is like a second home to me, and I'm just gravitating toward the songs.
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Society today is being fragmented by a way of thinking that is inherently short-sighted because it disregards the full horizon of truth - the truth about God and about us. By its nature, relativism fails to see the whole picture. It ignores the very principles that enable us to live and flourish in unity, order and harmony.
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If you're talking about the narrow issue of public assistance, I would like to see us move to a more healthy system. But until we come up with certain guarantees - for example, guaranteed jobs where mothers move off welfare - I support welfare very strongly. The worst thing we could do is impose time limits and then expect people to sink or swim once they move off welfare.
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Any time anyone makes a comic book into a movie, in some way, I think they have to kill the comic book.
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There's no way to understand housing as it exists today without federal policy.
