Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
Quotes to Explore
-
I write in a small office at home.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
The foundation of family - that's where it all begins for me.
-
I could live very quietly, do advertising to earn money.
-
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.
-
I have always believed that when you're feeling sorry for yourself, the best thing to do is help someone else.
-
Celebrities and 'famous' people are just regular folks. I know, it's a shocking and potentially dangerous statement.
-
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.
-
The old movie stars like Bogart, James Cagney, Jimmy Stewart, they weren't this gorgeous, striking six-foot man who's rippled with muscles.
-
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.
-
I want to have my desperate need for personal success shrunk, not enlarged.
-
I had to create some good work habits and attitude.
-
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.
-
Strange bonds of trust and self-deception tend to grow between journalists and their subjects.
-
Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.
-
We hope British citizens will follow it, but we have no way of obliging British citizens to do so.
-
The culture of critique undermines the spirit not only of people in public roles but of those who read about them, afraid to believe in anyone or anything because the next story... will tell them why they shouldn't.
-
People who know me, recognize a definite difference in my poise and in my personality, because I've grown.
-
If you are talking about terrorism, you need to sit down and understand what is making these people put dynamite around their waists and blow themselves up.
-
I think one possibility [in the future] might be chemotherapy. And I'm always hesitant to say that because it makes it sound like I'm against chemotherapy. Right now, chemotherapy is the best cancer treatment therapy we have. But let's say we find some way where we can almost genetically engineer the DNA of our being and fight cancer that way. Then, the idea that we used to pump poison into people to fight off cancer will almost seem like the use of leeches or something.
-
There's no way to understand housing as it exists today without federal policy.
