Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
-
We are all losers in comparison to Malala Yousafzai. But we are not all geniuses. Like me.
-
I would say as a journalist, I would envision travelling to other countries that have had to reckon with their past and see how they've done it: what worked, what didn't work, finding characters that would tell the story of how that process was done.
-
You can't make a direct comparison between middle-class African Americans and middle-class white Americans, affluent African Americans and affluent white Americans. The amount of wealth tends to be less.
-
When I see Bruce Banner becoming the Hulk, it's only a picture. My imagination has to do some of the work there, to impute feeling and everything. We're talking about something that's so surreal, it's just not possible within the world as we know it. So that requires a form that is not so literal.
-
One of the things we tell ourselves as African-Americans is if we work hard, play by the rules, we do start back a little ways, but if we can be twice as good, somehow we can escape history and heritage and legacy.
-
I think a lot about the private emotions of black people - what we feel and yet is rarely publicly expressed.
-
As an African-American, we stand on the shoulders of people who fought despite not seeing victories in their lifetime or even in their children's lifetime or even in their grandchildren's lifetime. So fatalism isn't really an option.
-
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.
-
I was born in West Baltimore, lived in a situation in which violence was everywhere.
-
The only people who usually have input on my writing are my wife and my editor. I'm not in conversation with anyone except the people I report on and the people I work with.
-
Black people are pledging their fealty to the state, and yet they aren't getting the same return. This is theft. It's systemized.
-
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.
-
Amiri Baraka went to Howard. Lucille Clifton went to Howard. Ossie Davis went to Howard. And I was aware of that when I was there. Charles Drew went to Howard. Thurgood Marshall went to the law school. Being aware of that and having all of that brought to bear, again, it's one of those things that I can't really separate from my career as a writer.
-
In the mid-90s The older gods were falling off. EPMD were breaking. Chuck and Flav had taken us as far as they could, and already the new voices were being hijacked by the death cults. Brothers who last week were shouting out Malcolm were flipped into studio gangsters, killing every nigger in sight.
-
Storytellers have the right to answer any question they choose.
-
There isn't a dude outside my dad who had greater influence on my life.
-
I do understand how hate eats at the soul and how to purge yourself of hate.
-
I get really, really concerned when I see somebody, taking $600,000 in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs, will not release what they're actually saying. That's concerning.
-
My father was haunted. He was bad at conjuring small talk, he watched very little TV, because once Conscious, every commercial, every program must be strip-mined for its deeper meaning, until it lays bare its role in this sinister American plot.
-
'White America' is a syndicate arrayed to protect its exclusive power to dominate and control our bodies.
-
My belief is in the chaos of the world and that you have to find your peace within the chaos and that you still have to find some sort of mission.
-
When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse.
-
I think 'Dear White People,' the show, is a tremendous artistic achievement. It's always hinting that there is something beyond the pleading and wokeness, something that the show's more militant characters can't see.
-
White racial grievance enjoys automatic credibility, and even when disproven, it is never disqualifying of its bearers.