Charles M. Blow Quotes & Sayings

Great leadership isn't shaped in the absence of opposition but in the presence of it. Great leaders draw us together by our universal humanity; they galvanize the wills of the willing; they draw clarity from the spigot of chaos. — Charles M. Blow

America is not static. America is striving. And sometimes, America requires critique. Jingoism is an avoidance of realism. You can simultaneously love and be disappointed in the object of your love, wanting it to be better than it is. In fact, that is a measure of love. Honest critique is a pillar of patriotism. — Charles M. Blow

For much of my life I would crave attention with a carnal intensity. From anyone. From everyone. That feeling of being chosen. I would flirt with anyone who was congenial and amenable - a ravenous, indiscriminate flirtation, or a feather-light, barely-there one - or allow myself to be flirted with, by women and men alike, to cover the emptiness I felt or to fill in the hole, the desired culmination being not so much physical intimacy as emotional affirmation. The boy who had once felt invisible would forever ache simply to be seen. — Charles M. Blow

The Obama years will be remembered as a cultural - and legal - tipping point for equality for all people who do not identify as strictly heterosexual, arguably the civil rights movement of our times. The president signed the bill repealing 'don't ask, don't tell.' The Defense of Marriage Act was struck down by the Supreme Court. — Charles M. Blow

There was no hierarchy of humanity.... And no one could strip me of my value and dignity, because no one had bestowed them- these things came into the world with me. — Charles M. Blow

I write a lot about disadvantaged people, particularly vulnerable children, because I feel that that's who I was. That is familiar terrain for me. And I try to write about things that are very close to me because I want people to feel the passion that I have for the subject. — Charles M. Blow

The first memory I have in the world is of death and tears. That is how I would mark the beginning of my life: the way people mark the end of one. My family had gathered at Papa Joe's house because Mam' Grace was slipping away, only I didn't register it that way. For some reason I thought that it was her birthday. — Charles M. Blow

Different is not deviant, no matter what the world may say. You have the moral obligation to love yourself. — Charles M. Blow

Our politics are overrun with characters acting at the behest of shadows. — Charles M. Blow

I had set about trying to make myself more polished than a country boy would be. — Charles M. Blow

I don't know how to describe the sound of a world crashing. Maybe there is no sound, just a great emptiness, an enveloping sorrow, a creeping nothingness that coils itself around you like a stiff wire. — Charles M. Blow

Conservatism is rooted in preservation; progressivism advances alteration. These are different love languages. These languages turn on your view of change itself: When you think of America, do you see a country struggling to be maintained or one striving to be made better? — Charles M. Blow

I was always a relatively quiet and introspective kid. — Charles M. Blow

Concealment makes the soul a swamp. Confession is how you drain it. — Charles M. Blow

We all have the awesome and underutilized power to simply let go of our past and step beyond it — Charles M. Blow

When I won my way to the international science fair, I didn't want to embarrass myself. It was the first time I was going to be away from home, the first time taking an airplane. I went to the local library, checked out every single etiquette book, and I read those books like I was uncovering some sort of treasure. — Charles M. Blow

Look at it this way: this administration is taking unprecedented steps to make sure that the government's secrets remain private while simultaneously invading the privacy of its citizens ... Many innocents must be violated so that a few guilty people can be stopped. It's a digital stop-and-frisk ... — Charles M. Blow

Co-opted convictions will always betray you. — Charles M. Blow

What too few people mention when discussing crime is the degree to which concentrated poverty, hopelessness and despair are the chambermaids of violence and incivility. — Charles M. Blow

An illustration is a visual editorial - it's just as nuanced. Everything that goes into it is a call you make: every color, every line weight, every angle. — Charles M. Blow

I better understood the little lies that liquor told, lifting spirits and drowning sorrows while withholding the whole truth--that, in the end, it is the spirit in peril of drowning. Sorrows have gills. — Charles M. Blow

It has been my experience that the "hardest" people in the world are actually the most fragile and the most soft-spoken are the strongest ... — Charles M. Blow

We don't vote for people because they are the exact embodiment of our values, but because they are likely to be the most responsive to them. — Charles M. Blow

The internet is ruthless. And people are very, very happy to let you know when they don't like something. — Charles M. Blow

My father was short for a man, with a child's plaything for a name - Spinner. He had flawless dark brown skin and a head full of big, wet-looking curls, black as oil. And he had the smile of a scoundrel - the kind of smile that disarmed men and undressed women. — Charles M. Blow

I had an insanely long commute - New York to D.C. - when I worked at 'National Geographic.' I hate to waste time, so I spent my time by writing about my life on the premise that I might be able to pitch those as short essays to magazines. It wasn't until later that I realized that I was writing a book. — Charles M. Blow

Equality must be won - by every generation - because it will never be freely granted. — Charles M. Blow

While the word 'bisexual' was technically correct, I would only slowly come to use it to refer to myself in part because of the derisive connotations. But, in addition, it would seem to me woefully inadequate and impressionistically inaccurate. — Charles M. Blow

You don't become a teacher to make a world of money. You become a teacher to make a world of difference. — Charles M. Blow

No one knows how to hold a grudge like a proper Southerner. — Charles M. Blow

Voter apathy is a civic abdication. — Charles M. Blow

You don't have to dumb it down, but you do have to sum it up. — Charles M. Blow

Time ground to a halt and the trees whispered in the language of God and nature about steadfastness and resilience - gently saying that one could be constantly stirred yet not moved, bent but not broken, that a thing well grounded and deeply rooted could ever stand. — Charles M. Blow

I'm trying to illuminate how perilously narrow we draw the concepts of masculinity and sexuality in our male culture - particularly in black male culture - and to help people to see that there's room enough for everyone. — Charles M. Blow

It would only be in the cold gaze of hindsight that I would be able to comprehend that while in flight from pain, I became an agent of it. — Charles M. Blow

One doesn't have to operate with great malice to do great harm. The absence of empathy and understanding are sufficient. In fact, a man convinced of his virtue even in the midst of his vice is the worst kind of man. — Charles M. Blow

I have always loved science, but I have always loved the arts - drawing, painting and, yes, writing - more. — Charles M. Blow

Trying hard and working hard is its own reward. It feeds the soul. It affirms your will and your power. And it radiates from you, lighting the way for all those who see you. — Charles M. Blow

Being a world leader is less about destiny than focused determination, and it is there that we have faltered. — Charles M. Blow

But they were different. Weary, not sweet. The skin above Jed's eyes fell soft, releasing the worries before they could stick. — Charles M. Blow

All identity labels are umbrella terms to some degree, but this term 'bisexual' is not only serviceable, but it is sufficient. And yes, it brings together a bunch of people who are maybe shades different from one another. And maybe that's the beauty of labels: that they force you to be with other people and see the difference. — Charles M. Blow

I would harness the truths that had been trapped in me like a fire shut up in my bones. I would give my life over to my passions, my writing, and my children, and they would breathe life back into me. — Charles M. Blow

A lie is like a cat: you need to stop it before it gets out the door or it's really hard to catch. — Charles M. Blow

This is the reason I write, to remind people of honor and courage; to tell them that their cause isn't lost, that their destiny is victory. — Charles M. Blow

There is no wrong time to do the right thing. — Charles M. Blow

There can be moments in your life where you may feel attracted to someone depending on circumstance, depending on the person of one gender or another, and sometimes where that is less of an influence in your life. — Charles M. Blow

I was born in the summer of 1970, the last of five boys stretched over eight years. My parents were a struggling young couple who had been married one afternoon under a shade tree by a preacher without a church. No guests or fancy dress, just the two of them, lost in love, and the preacher taking a break from working on a house. — Charles M. Blow

I know that life, I've done all those things, and I can still tell you that just being you is perfectly fine. — Charles M. Blow

It was words and reading that had made me quiet, and being quiet had made me a mark. — Charles M. Blow

Often, those with the most to lose as a result of a poor policy move are the most vulnerable and most marginalized. Those folks need a voice, and I will endeavor to be that voice. — Charles M. Blow

Elections have a way of cooling passions, especially when voters get what they want. — Charles M. Blow

We need to see people other than ourselves in order to empathize. If we don't live around others we do ourselves and our society damage because our ability to relate becomes impaired. It's easy to demonize, or simply dismiss, people you don't know or see...It's nearly impossible to commiserate with the unseen and unknown. — Charles M. Blow

The not-doing spoke volumes. — Charles M. Blow

It was the kind of building that remembered things, deep-down things, things that rode tears into the world, telling them back to anyone old enough or wise enough to know how to listen with their eyes. — Charles M. Blow

The only way to vanquish cowardice is to brandish courage. — Charles M. Blow

Trump's America is not America: not today's or tomorrow's, but yesterday's.

Trump's America is brutal, perverse, regressive, insular and afraid. There is no hope in it; there is no light in it. It is a vast expanse of darkness and desolation.

And that is a vision of America that most of the people in this country cannot and will not abide. — Charles M. Blow

But vulnerability is the leading edge of truth. Being wiling to sacrifice a false life is the only way to live a true one. — Charles M. Blow

In the same way that Occupy Wall Street forever elevated that concept of income inequality, the Black Lives Matter protesters have elevated the idea of inequity in policing as it relates to minority communities. — Charles M. Blow

Children see God every day; they just don't call it that. It's the summer sky painted with cumulus clouds by day and sequined with a million stars by night. It's the sweet whispers of sweet gum trees and the sounds riding the tops of honeysuckle-scented breezes. Children feel God stuffed into brown fluffy dogs with stitches strong enough to withstand a good squeeze, and on the lips of round women who can't get enough sugar from Chocolate.

I began to believe that God is us and nature, beauty and love, mystery and majesty, everything right and good. — Charles M. Blow

One thing the gay rights movement taught the world is the importance of being visible. — Charles M. Blow

I say, seeking to diminish the human dignity of another whose only crime is not loving whom you would have him or her love is immoral and an offense to the indomitable determination of the heart. — Charles M. Blow

There are no 'come shoot me' clothes. — Charles M. Blow

My mother was a stout woman with a man's name - Billie. She was plain-faced with honest eyes - no black grease by the lash line, no blue powder on the lids, eyebrows not plucked up high and thin. — Charles M. Blow

A heart still works even when it's broken — Charles M. Blow

America is a living idea. It isn't only the tenets of its founding, but also the terms of its future. Every day, we make America. Seeking to preserve and enshrine one vision of this country from one period of its past robs it of what makes it magical: its infinite possibility for adjustment. — Charles M. Blow

Buffalo Soldiers in Italy: Black Americans in World War II — Charles M. Blow

I had been fortified by trauma, the way a bone, once broken, grows back stronger than it had been. — Charles M. Blow