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We are all losers in comparison to Malala Yousafzai. But we are not all geniuses. Like me.
Ta-Nehisi Coates -
I feel like my job is to look at the world and to report what I see, to write what I see as honestly and directly as I can. I don't want to cut it or make it easy, but be as direct as I can.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
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You may not be able to change the course of government, but you can achieve some peace. And books were the path to that. I grew up in a house where books were everywhere.
Ta-Nehisi Coates -
[Barack Obama] grew up in Hawaii, far, far removed from the most, you know, sort of violent, you know, tendencies of Jim Crow and segregation. He wasn't directly exposed to that. He was untraumatized.
Ta-Nehisi Coates -
It is, I think, the very chaos of America that allowed me to prosper.
Ta-Nehisi Coates -
In comics, you have to imagine what happens. I really loved it; I loved collecting. I loved following the adventures and figuring out what was going to happen next. I was a huge X-Men fan; I was a huge Spider-Man fan, and, to large degree, I remain one. It's literature for me; it's art.
Ta-Nehisi Coates -
White racial grievance enjoys automatic credibility, and even when disproven, it is never disqualifying of its bearers.
Ta-Nehisi Coates -
I do understand how hate eats at the soul and how to purge yourself of hate.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
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I love living around black people. Home is home. We suffer under racism and the physical deprivations that come with that, but beneath that, we form cultures and traditions that are beautiful.
Ta-Nehisi Coates -
It's very hard to be black in this country and hate America. It's really hard to live like that. I would actually argue it's impossible to fully see yourself.
Ta-Nehisi Coates -
When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse.
Ta-Nehisi Coates -
Throughout his eight years in office, Barack Obama endured a campaign of illegitimacy waged either by pluralities or majorities of the Republican party. Donald Trump rooted his candidacy in that campaign. It's fairly obvious.
Ta-Nehisi Coates -
I'm a writer. My job is to speak what - that which I think is true. If that bridges the gap, that's good. If it doesn't, that's too bad.
Ta-Nehisi Coates -
Storytellers have the right to answer any question they choose.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
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Everybody thinks that an important book has to be a big, long book.
Ta-Nehisi Coates -
Every writer dreams of having the ability to hold forth for 8,000 words and pull all these different forms together: history, reportage, journalism. That was all I really wanted, and 'The Atlantic' was my first high-profile opportunity.
Ta-Nehisi Coates -
The process of getting conscious, for me, was a very, very uncomfortable, disturbing, and sometimes physically painful process. And so that's the standard to which I write, because it was what I've experienced over my time.
Ta-Nehisi Coates -
It is said that Obama speaks 'professorially,' a fact that understates the quickness and agility of his mind.
Ta-Nehisi Coates -
Somebody once told me, black people, in and of themselves, are cosmopolitan. There's cosmopolitanism within the black experience. There's an incredible amount.
Ta-Nehisi Coates -
It meant something to see people who looked like me in comic books. It was this beautiful place that I felt pop culture should look like.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
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Rates of black poverty have decreased. Black teen-pregnancy rates are at record lows - and the gap between black and white teen-pregnancy rates has shrunk significantly. But such progress rests on a shaky foundation, and fault lines are everywhere.
Ta-Nehisi Coates -
You don't make a case for reparations thinking, 'Oh yeah, people are gonna love this.' I didn't see that coming.
Ta-Nehisi Coates -
When people think about reparations, they immediately think about people who've been dead for 100 years.
Ta-Nehisi Coates -
If Obama's enormous symbolic power draws primarily from being the country's first black president, it also draws from his membership in hip-hop's foundational generation.
Ta-Nehisi Coates