Ntozake Shange Quotes & Sayings

I usedta live in the world
really be in the world
free & sweet talkin
good mornin & thank-you & nice day
uh huh
i cant now
i cant be nice to nobody
nice is such a rip-off
regular beauty & a smile in the street
is just a set-up — Ntozake Shange

Nice is such a rip-off. — Ntozake Shange

Somebody/ anybody sing a black girl's song bring her out to know herself to know you but sing her rhythms carin/ struggle/ hard times sing her song of life she's been dead so long closed in silence so long she doesn't know the sound of her own voice her infinite beauty she's half-notes scattered without rhythm/ no tune sing her sighs sing the song of her possibilities sing a righteous gospel let her be born let her be born & handled warmly. — Ntozake Shange

We need a god who bleeds now
a god whose wounds are not
some small male vengeance
some pitiful concession to humility
a desert swept with dryin marrow in honor of the lord
we need a god who bleeds
spreads her lunar vulva & showers us in shades of scarlet
thick & warm like the breath of her
our mothers tearing to let us in
this place breaks open
like our mothers bleeding
the planet is heaving mourning our ignorance
the moon tugs the seas
to hold her/to hold her
embrace swelling hills/i am
not wounded i am bleeding to life
we need a god who bleeds now
whose wounds are not the end of anything — Ntozake Shange

I loved you on purpose
i was open on purpose
i still crave vulnerability & close talk
& i'm not even sorry bout you bein sorry
you can carry all the guilt & grime ya wanna
just dont give it to me
i cant use another sorry
next time
you should admit
you're mean/ low-down/ triflin/ & no count straight out
steada bein sorry alla the time
enjoy bein yrself — Ntozake Shange

I write for young girls of color, for girls who don't even exist yet, so that there is something there for them when they arrive. I can only change how they live, not how they think. — Ntozake Shange

Right now being born a girl is to be born threatened ... — Ntozake Shange

I've never thought of leaving the South, never. — Ntozake Shange

Through my tears
I found god in myself
and I loved her fiercely — Ntozake Shange

I am gonna write poems til i die and when i have gotten outta this body i am gonna hang round in the wind and knock over everybody who got their feet on the ground. — Ntozake Shange

But bein alive & bein a woman & bein colored is a metaphysical
dilemma/ i havent conquered yet/ do you see the point
my spirit is too ancient to understand the separation of soul & gender/ my love is too delicate to have thrown back on my face
my love is too delicate to have thrown back on my face
my love is too beautiful to have thrown back on my face
my love is too sanctified to have thrown back on my face
my love is too magic to have thrown back on my face
my love is too saturday nite to have thrown back on my face
my love is too complicated to have thrown back on my face
my love is too music to have thrown back on my face — Ntozake Shange

And this is for Colored girls who have considered suicide, but are moving to the ends of their own rainbows. — Ntozake Shange

One thing I don't need
is any more apologies
i got sorry greetin me at my front door
you can keep yrs
i don't know what to do wit em
they don't open doors
or bring the sun back
they don't make me happy
or get a mornin paper
didn't nobody stop usin my tears to wash cars
cuz a sorry. — Ntozake Shange

What I want and I wanted to be unforgettable. — Ntozake Shange

I done forgot all abt words
aint got no definitions — Ntozake Shange

I am really colored & really sad sometimes & you hurt me
more than i ever danced outta/ i am ready to die like a lily in the
desert/ & i cdnt let you in on it cuz i didnt know/ here
is what i have/ poems/ big thighs/ lil tits/ &
so much love/ will you take it from me this one time/
please this is for you — Ntozake Shange

Where there is a woman there is magic. — Ntozake Shange

Multiculturalism is a white people joke. — Ntozake Shange

Ever since I realized there waz someone callt/
a colored girl an evil woman a bitch or a nag/
i been tryin not to be that & leave bitterness/
in somebody else's cup ... — Ntozake Shange

If anything is life-changing, being the descendant of a slave is. — Ntozake Shange

Being alive and being a woman is all I got, but being colored is a metaphysical dilemma I haven't conquered yet. — Ntozake Shange

When I die, I will no be guilty of having left a generation of girls behind thinking that anyone can tend to their emotional health other than themselves. — Ntozake Shange

I found god in myself and i loved her i loved her fiercely — Ntozake Shange

The slaves who were ourselves had known terror intimately, confused sunrise with pain, & accepted indifference as kindness. — Ntozake Shange

When words & manners leave you no space for yourself
make
very personal
very clear
& your obstructions will join you or disappear. — Ntozake Shange

Our dreams draw blood from old sores. — Ntozake Shange

Creation is everything you do. Make something. — Ntozake Shange

I'm a firm believer that language and how we use language determines how we act, and how we act then determines our lives and other people's lives. — Ntozake Shange

I started writing because there's an absence of things I was familiar with or that I dreamed about. One of my senses of anger is related to this vacancy - a yearning I had as a teenager ... and when I get ready to write, I think I'm trying to fill that. — Ntozake Shange

White people use their literature to maintain culture. That's why you find references to Milton and Spencer and Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky in contemporary novels. — Ntozake Shange

I hit my head against the wall because I don't want to know all the terrible things that I know about. I don't want to feel all these wretched things, but they're in me already. If I don't get rid of them, I'm not ever going to feel anything else. — Ntozake Shange

In our ordinaryness we are most bizarre. — Ntozake Shange

I got 15 trumpets where other women got hips
& a upright bass for both sides of my heart — Ntozake Shange

Multiculturalism isn't about culture, it's about power. — Ntozake Shange

I'm only human, & inadequacy is what makes us human, & if we was perfect we wdnt have nothin to strive for, so you might as well go on & forgive me pretty baby, cause i'm sorry — Ntozake Shange

My spirit is too ancient to understand the separation of soul & gender — Ntozake Shange

I'm committed to the idea that one of the few things human beings have to offer is the richness of unconscious and conscious emotional responses to being alive ... The kind of esteem that's given to brightness/smartness obliterates average people or slow learners from participating fully in human life, particularly technical and intellectual life. But you cannot exclude any human being from emotional participation. — Ntozake Shange

Our society allows people to be absolutely neurotic and totally out of touch with their feelings and everyone else's feelings, and yet be very respectable. — Ntozake Shange