Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
What it is is that Barack Obama was raised by a white mother and two white grandparents who, A, told him he was black and that there was nothing wrong with being black.
Quotes to Explore
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Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.
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Like many writers, I started by writing short stories. I needed to learn how to write and stories are the most practical way to do this, and less soul-destroying than working your way through a lengthy novel and then discovering it's rubbish.
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I have a rebellious teenage thing. If my mom says I can't do it, I'm gonna do it. But I'm pretty good. That's why it was fun to play Sam in 'The Bling Ring.' I got to be someone crazy and wild to the extreme, then go home and relax and get rid of the burden.
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I know there is something out there, and like most people, I tend to believe in it more when things go bad. But I'm not like Shirley MacLaine, who probably believes we were past lovers in another life.
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Self esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves.
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Now, I am completely independent - I earn my living by speaking and writing.
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It was a small provincial place with great people and I had a happy childhood growing up in Queens.
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The test is to recognize the mistake, admit it and correct it. To have tried to do something and failed is vastly better than to have tried to do nothing and succeeded.
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I have a fascination with Flight 93. My emotions are mixed: awe, gratitude, fear, heartache, pride - even, in some ways, guilt.
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Corporations cannot commit treason, or be outlawed or excommunicated, for they have no souls.
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Sometimes I see through things when people are talking. I'm really sensitive to other people, so I can tell if somebody's putting on a front.
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Sometimes, poor people don't smell too good, so love can have no nose.
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When you sample something, you're using the crutch of borrowing chords and melodies from a song that's already great, that's already stood the test of time, that's already special. When you're trying to do it all from scratch, you're writing something brand new that has to stand on its own.
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Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.
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I'm really just a normal person.
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I always wake up 10 minutes before I have to be anywhere.
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Before this distinguished assembly and the world, the bells today proclaim the joyous tidings of the completion of this quietly soaring tower.
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Real people - the interesting ones, anyway - don't remain static, and neither do the ones I write about. Changes take place, and they react to them.
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If you were an alien who came to our bookstores - or browsed our teen magazines - you'd think that only Earth girls who look like Mila Kunis ever got any action.
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I'm lucky. Usually you're dead to get your own museum, but I'm still alive to see mine.
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Unless you see yourself standing there with the shrieking crowd, full of hostility and hatred for the holy and innocent Lamb of God, you don’t really understand the nature and depth of your sin or the necessity of the cross.
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The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name. The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth; the Named is the mother of all things.
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I can never be in the same place for too long. It feels like the world is caving in.
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What it is is that Barack Obama was raised by a white mother and two white grandparents who, A, told him he was black and that there was nothing wrong with being black.
