Best Black Thought Quotes & Sayings

The girl in the tight black dress was passing by us now, eyeing Wes and walking entirely too slowly. "Hi," she said, and he nodded at her but didn't reply. Knew it, I thought.
Honestly," I said.
What?"
Come on. You have to admit, it's sort of ridiculous."
What is?"
Now that I had to define it, I found myself struggling for the right words. "You know," I said, then figured Kristy had really summed it up best. "The sa-woon."
The what? — Sarah Dessen

My heart- dammit
my heart stopped in my chest as I stared at them. He had me by the throat because he had my whole world in his hands. I said one word I thought I'd never utter to the bastard.
"Please." I swallowed hard, but the words came out easier than I could've ever imagined. "Please don't hurt her."
"You'd beg for a human who wouldn't do the same for you?"
"I'd do anything for her."
"And I would do anything for him." Kat gasped out. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Honesty is occasionally the best policy," she said yawning. And then she added, "By the Black Staff of Beldar, I am tired. If I can find a usable bed in what's left of my house I intend to collapse on it. And Elwyn, if you disturb me before dawn, I promise, I will turn you into a train of thought, and lose you. — L.J.Smith

Shebna scraped the tablet clean and began drawing circles in the soft clay. "Suppose you had six figs and you ate two. How many would
"
"Four." Hezekiah answered before Shebna finished, and the tutor's thick black eyebrows rose in surprise.
"And suppose I had five figs. How many would we
"
"Nine."
"Have you done this before?"
Hezekiah thought the question was ridiculous. "I've eaten figs lots of times. — Lynn Austin

There is, following an ample meal, a sort of pause in time, filled with a gentle slackening of thought and energy, when to sit doing nothing gives us a sense of life's richness and a feeling that the least effort would be intolerable. The melancholy we took with us to table has disappeared and, if we think of it at all it is only to smile, as at some black mood now past, its cause having gone. And with the melancholy, all scruple, all remorse departs from us. — Marcel Proust

The Birmingham campaign was a repeat of SCLC's 1961 campaign in Albany, Georgia, which turned out a complete failure. King was banking on being able to fill up the jails and still have recruits willing to engage in civil disobedience, shutting the system down, but the authorities simply made their jails "bottomless" by shipping detainees elsewhere. A couple years later, black residents of Albany rioted, suggesting what they thought about their experience with nonviolence (these riots are not mentioned in most chronologies of the movement). — Anonymous

Nearly every African who has given the issue thought knows that America is not only not racist, it is the best place for an African to immigrate to. That is why more black Africans have come to America voluntarily than came to America as slaves - a statistic that virtually no college student is allowed to know. — Dennis Prager

Could I be your girl, too?" I asked quickly.
The large, broad-shouldered man looked away before he answered. "Well, now," he said, as though he had given it deep thought, "I sure do think I would like that."
"But," I said, concerned that he hadn't noticed, "I don't look like your other girls."
"You mean because you white?"
I nodded.
"Abinia," he said, pointing toward the chickens, "you look at those birds. Some of them be brown, some of them be white and black. Do you think when they little chicks, those mamas and papas care about that? — Kathleen Grissom

Irving Wallace wrote a bestselling novel, The Man, in the 1960s about a black man becoming president of the United States. We thought that such a possibility was thousands of years in the future. Some people may still have some difficulty with the idea, but that's a major cultural meme shift. — Wayne Dyer

She's come to realize that life is a bit like doing laundry
you have to separate the darks from the lights. One's not necessarily better than the other
they're just different. They have different needs, require different levels of care. She knows plenty of customers who don't give it much thought and throw all their laundry in together, and maybe that's the chaotic part of life that just happens, that no matter how hard you try, you can't always keep things separate. A red sock gets mixed in with a load of whites, or a delicate black top gets washed in hot water by accident. These things happen. All you can do is learn from it and move on. Tell your husband to enjoy his pink underwear, give your shrunken top to your little sister or niece. But it doesn't mean that you stop sorting your laundry. You keep sorting
lights from darks, darks from lights
and hope for the best. — Darien Gee

No, there was something in him that would not give in
neither to the whiskey, nor the woman, nor even the music. Even in the midst of his best music, it sat in the middle of him, this invisible black dog, and growled and waited, never to be cajoled. He knew of its presence
and was a little uneasy. For of course he wanted to let himself go, to feel rosy and loving and all that. But at the very thought, the black dog showed its teeth. — D.H. Lawrence

Death turned to leave the room, but stopped when Hex began to write furiously. He went back and looked at the emerging paper.
+++ Dear Hogfather, For Hogswatch I Want
OH, NO. YOU CAN'T WRITE LETT ... Death paused, and then said, YOU CAN, CAN'T YOU.
+++ Yes. I Am Entitled +++
Death waited until the pen had stopped, and picked up the paper.
BUT YOU ARE A MACHINE. THINGS HAVE NO DESIRES. A DOORKNOB WANTS NOTHING, EVEN THOUGH IT IS A COMPLEX MACHINE.
+++ All Things Strive +++
YOU HAVE A POINT, said Death. He thought of tiny red petals in the black depths, and read to the end of the list.
I DON'T KNOW WHAT MOST OF THESE THINGS ARE. I DON'T THINK THE SACK WILL, EITHER.
+++ I Regret This +++
BUT WE WILL DO THE BEST WE CAN, said Death.
FRANKLY, I SHALL BE CLAD WHEN TONIGHT'S OVER. IT'S MUCH HARDER TO GIVE THAN TO RECEIVE. He rummaged in his sack. LET ME SEE ... HOW OLD ARE YOU? — Terry Pratchett

Tulips, I thought, staring at the jumble of letters before me. Had the ancient Greeks known them under a different name, if they'd had tulips at all? The letter psi, in Greek, is shaped like a tulip. All of a sudden, in the dense alphabet forest of the page, little black tulips began to pop up in a quick, random pattern like falling raindrops. — Donna Tartt

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good. — W. H. Auden

The fog lifted in the evening and a blue-black band at the horizon marked the end of the sea and the beginning of thought. Where does a beginning begin when nothing has gone on before? — Gretel Ehrlich

I really did not think a thing about playing five black players to start the game; they were our best players and deserved to start. But if I knew all the misery it was going to cause me in the weeks following the game, I'd have thought long and hard about it. The players from Kentucky were gracious about it, but many of their fans and people from other parts of the country did not want to see it. — Don Haskins

I always thought the best kind of sunglasses are the motorcycle helmets with the black plastic masks on them. That way, nobody can recognize the back of your head either. — Bob Dylan

If any personal description of me is thought desirable, it may be said, I am, in height, six feet, four inches, nearly; lean in flesh, weighing on an average one hundred and eighty pounds; dark complexion, with coarse black hair, and grey eyes
no other marks or brands recollected. — Abraham Lincoln

In extreme old age you suddenly find you are unable to run uphill, two buckets full of hen food are heavier than they were and the cheerful scream of hearing aids, provided they are working, is a welcome sound. Other things go wrong. Paddy Leigh Fermor, aged ninety-four came to stay, got into the bath, looked down at the tap end and to his dismay saw that both feet had turned black. 'Oh God,' he thought, 'Teeth, ears and eyes are wonky and now my feet.' He need not have worried. he had got into the bath with his socks on. — Deborah Mitford

Yesterday when we went over the plan again and again, I never thought about Grandad showing up. Because I'm an idiot, basically
an idiot with poor planning skills. Of course he's here. Where else would he be?
Seriously, what else could go wrong? — Holly Black

I took the liberty of designing your pennant," said Rhy, resting his elbows on the gallery's marble banister. "I hope you don't mind."
Kell cringed. "Do I even want to know what's on it?"
Rhy tugged the folded piece of fabric from his pocket, and handed it over. The cloth was red, and when he unfolded it, he saw the image of a rose in black and white. The rose had been mirrored, folded along the center axis and reflected, so the design was actually two flowers, surrounded by a coil of thorns.
"How subtle," said Kell tonelessly.
"You could at least pretend to be grateful."
"And you couldn't have picked something a little more ... I don't know ... imposing? A serpent? A great beast? A bird of prey?"
"A bloody handprint?" retorted Rhy. "Oh, what about a glowing black eye?"
Kell glowered.
"You're right," continued Rhy, "I should have just drawn a frowning face. But then everyone would know it's you. I thought this was rather fitting. — Victoria Schwab

Things you never thought were going to turn into something end up being the most important things in your life. You have to learn to not try to control it. — Michael Ian Black

Something about the turbulence of adolescence makes you want to do something creative ... I thought as I got older I would stop writing about it, but I find adolescence, and popular depictions of it, very interesting. I like to see where my own life intersects or diverges from notions of what a teenager is supposed to be, or what a black person is supposed to be, or a woman. — Allison Joseph

Christmas Eve, 1955, Benny Profane, wearing black levis, suede jacket,
sneakers and big cowboy hat, happened to pass through Norfolk, Virginia. Given to sentimental impulses, he thought he'd look in on the Sailor's Grave, his old tin can's tavern on East Main Street. — Thomas Pynchon

I'd never heard of them, but at that moment, it was the best song I'd ever heard. I went out and bought Ten and listened to it on repeat. When I listened to track five, "Black," it was like I was there, in that moment all over again.
After the summer was over, when I got back home, I went to the music store and bought the sheet music and learned to play it on the piano. I thought one day I could accompany Conrad and we could be, like, a band. — Jenny Han

All the hovering angels were gone. He thought maybe there had been a funeral. Someone had died. Everything was black - the sky, the clothes he was wearing, his heart. — Benjamin Alire Saenz

The average life expectancy for a black man in an American city is something like twenty-three very short years. The reality of that had never fully kicked in before, but it did that night. And I thought, hell, I'm at risk just walking around. — Suzanne Brockmann

The actual tragedy of Emmett Till, he had told her once, was not the murder of a black child for whistling at a white woman but that some black people thought: But why did you whistle? — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Lady Gregory, in a note to her play Aristotle's Bellows, writes:
Aristotle's name is a part of our folklore. The wife of one of our labourers told me one day as a bee buzzed through the open door, Aristotle of the Books was very wise, but the bees got the best of him in the end. He wanted to know how they did pack the comb, and he wasted the best part of a fortnight watching them doing it. Then he made a hive with a glass cover on it and put it over them, and thought he would watch them, but when he put his eye to the glass, they had covered it with wax, so that it was as black as the pot, and he was as blind as before. He said he was never rightly killed until then. The bees beat him that time surely. — Hilda M. Ransome

But now I wonder
what if everyone is pretty much the same and it's just a thousand small choices that add up to the person you are? No good or evil, no black and white, no inner demons or angels whispering the right answers in our ears like it's some cosmic SAT test. Just us, hour by hour, minute by minute, day by day,making the best choices we can. The thought is horrifying. If that's true, then there's no right choice. There's only choice. — Holly Black

I thought 'The Artist' was a perfect way to find a good balance. The artistic challenge is obvious because the film is black-and-white and its silent, but I did my best to make the movie accessible and easy to watch. I really don't want to make elitist movies. I really try hard to work for the audience. Audiences are smart. They get everything. — Michel Hazanavicius

It was more that he did better being busy, keeping to a routine. It helped hold the black dogs of thought at bay. Also he had learned that a person could be happy with having done the best they could under the circumstances. It didn't always have to be bright and shiny and impressive to the outside observer. — Ellen Airgood

The Old Language really was beautiful, Blay thought. Staring at the symbols, for one brief, ridiculous moment he imagined his own name across Qhuinn's shoulders, carved into that smooth skin in the manner of the mating ritual.
Never going to happen. They were destined to be best friends ... which, compared to strangers, was something huge. Compared to lovers? It was the cold side of a locked door. — J.R. Ward

So ... have you ever thought about dyeing your hair punk-rocker-chick black? As I'm sure you've heard, I have a thing for brunettes and always avoid blondes."
"I've heard. And no."
"Too bad. Because you're making me rethink my stance about doing my friends' exes." I snorted, not even trying to hide my ... incredulity? Surely I wasn't amused.
"Your making me rethink my stance on cold-blooded homicide — Gena Showalter

He'd never felt this protective of a woman before. Only she brought that out in him. That powerful, odd mixture of independence and vulnerability completely melted him.
The fact that she flew a Black Hawk and could talk shop with the best of them? Hot as hell. And her laugh. God, she had the dirtiest laugh he'd ever heard. Every time he heard it he thought of sex. Hot, sweaty sex, the kind that left a man exhausted and weak and his partner unable to move. — Kaylea Cross

Grief is beautiful?' She thought it was the most dreadful feeling possible. At best she viewed the world through a haze, and at worst everything looked black.
'It means you've loved another with all your heart,' Luka said. 'What's the use of being alive if you've never loved like that, not even once? — Belinda Alexandra

The General knew he would probably die, for infantry took pleasure in killing cavalry and he would be the leading horseman in the attack on the bridge, but the General was a soldier and he had long learned that a soldier's real enemy is the fear of death. Beat that fear and victory was certain, and victory brought glory and fame and medals and money and, best of all, sweetest of all, most glorious and wondrous of all, the modest teasing grin of a short black-haired Emperor who would pat the Dragoon General as though he was a faithful dog, and the thought of that Imperial favour made the General quicken his horse and raise his battered sword. — Bernard Cornwell

I'm sorry. I'm a little on edge."
"No need to remind me," Mg. Aviosky quipped just as a real person emerged from that second right, some sort of ledger in his hands.
"There are guests at the door," the man said, closing the ledger. The ensuing burst of air rustled his wavy black hair. In words pitched at a light baritone, he added, "And I would have thought the knock gave it away. — Charlie N. Holmberg

The winters were getting colder, starting earlier, lasting longer, with more snows than he could remember from childhood. As soon as man stopped adding his megatons of filth to the atmosphere each day, he thought, the atmosphere had reverted to what it must have been long ago, moister weather summer and winter, more stars than he had ever seen before, and more, it seemed, each night than the night before: the sky a clear, endless blue by day, velvet blue-black at night with blazing stars that modern man had never seen. — Kate Wilhelm

Do they know I'm black?" I ask. "I thought you were biracial." To most white people, black and biracial are the same thing. — Gisele Walko

There was no person, whether they thought I was too fat, too black, too country, too ghetto, too New York, too thug or too whatever! Nobody ultimately had the say over whether or not I was going to make it. — Kelly Price

I wonder if I can write this history, or if on every page there will be some sneaking show of a bitterness I thought long dead. I think myself cured of all spite, but when I touch pen to paper, the hurt of a boy bleeds out with the sea-spawned ink, until I suspect each carefully formed black letter scabs over some ancient scarlet wound. — Robin Hobb

...I'm momentarily transfixed, torn between curiosity and fear. I can pull it up the gently sloping mud bank, but then what? Already thought is lagging behind events, as the blotchy brown mass slides up wet mud toward me, its amorphous margins flowing into the craters left by retreating feet. In the center of the yard-wide disc is a raised turret where two eyes open and close, flashing black. And it's bellowing. A loud rhythmic sound that is at first inexplicable until I realize that those blinking eyes are its spiracles, now sucking in air instead of water, which it is pumping out via gill slits on its underside. And all the while it brandishes that blade, stabbing the air like a scorpion... — Jeremy Wade

For the word "We" must never be spoken, save by one's choice and as a second thought. This word must never be placed first within man's soul, else it becomes a monster, the root of all the evils on earth, the root of man's torture by men, and of an unspeakable lie.
The word "We" is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens to stone, and crushes all beneath it, and that which is white and that which is black are lost equally in the grey of it. It is the word by which the depraved steal the virtue of the good, by which the weak steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal the wisdom of the sages. — Ayn Rand

There was no sign of life round the domed emplacement of the Moonraker, and the concrete, already beginning to shimmer in the early morning sun, stretched emptily away towards Deal. It looked like a newly laid aerodome or rather, he thought, with its three disparate concrete 'things', the beehive dome,the flat-iron blast-wall, and the distant cube of the firing point, each casting black pools of shadow towards him in the early sun, like a Dali desert landscape in which three objets trouves reposed at carefully calculated random. — Ian Fleming

Sirius looked out of the fire at Harry, a crease between his sunken eyes.
"You're less like your father than I thought," he said finally, a definite coolness in his voice. "The risk would've been what made it fun for James."
"Look - "
"Well, I'd better get going ... I'll write to tell you a time I can make it back into the fire, then, shall I? If you can stand to risk it?"
There was a tiny pop, and the place where Sirius's head had been was flickering flame once more. — J.K. Rowling

Freud thought he was bringing the plague to the U.S.A., but the U.S.A. has victoriously resisted the psychoanalytical frost by real deep freezing, by mental and sexual refrigeration. They have countered the black magic of the Unconscious with the white magic of "doing your own thing," air conditioning, sterilization, mental frigidity and the cold media of information. — Jean Baudrillard

Phrenology is the study of the brain or how it operates, you know, the particular components that effect the nerves and the thought process, and the study of the size of the head. We just wanted to tie it into subject matters. — Black Thought

I thought there'd be some black people." "Hitler will only fight them in separate units. He's a snob. — Chris Cleave

I took the sleeper out of Glasgow, and as the smelly old train bumped out of Central Station and across the Jamaica Street Bridge, I stared out at the orange halogen streetlamps reflected in the black water of the river Clyde. I gazed at the crumbling Victorian buildings that would soon be sandblasted and renovated into yuppie hutches. I watched the revelers and rascals traverse the shiny wet streets. I thought of the thrill and danger of my youth and the fear and frustration of my adult life thus far. I thought of the failure of my marriage and my failures as a man. I saw all this through my reflection in the nighttime window.
Down the tracks I went, hardly aware that I was going further south with every passing second. — Craig Ferguson

Once upon a time there was a little girl, and she told a lie to her friend's brother so that her friend's brother drove her to the bus station.

She brought with her a bottle of orange soda, fifty dollars (half in change), sparkly slippers, and her cell phone.

He thought he was helping.

So did she. — Holly Black

Is there anything you want to do before we put our heads in plastic boxes for two days?'
I thought about this for a second, then held the side of her face and kissed her.
We both zipped up our suits just in time to see the reactor blow: a column of green radioactive fire, belching black smoke. Di squeezed my hand, our big boxy heads knocked clumsily together, and I tried to think of something romantic to say.
'Well, I guess that's why they all die of cancer. — Tom Francis

So this, Harriet thought, gazing at her black-clad reflection, was what bearing up looked like. The eyes in the mirror stared at her, somehow, while fixing themselves far away.
Bearing up, then, must be this: the feeling of perfect frozen stillness, so that to raise your hand was a wrenching and unnatural event. It was not being able to sleep or eat, and the small placid tone in which she heard herself decline the food. It was the presentiment that there must be a crack or a hole somewhere at hand down which she was to throw and extinguish herself, since there must surely be something provided to make this bearable. — Jude Morgan

Not one thought entered my head that did not seem disloyal. I was ashamed, seeing their pride close up, as if for the first time, at how little I had accomplished, how much I had failed to do at St. Paul's. Somewhere in the last two years I had forgotten my mission. What had I done, I kept thinking, that was worthy of their faith? How had I helped my race? How had I prepared myself for a meaningful future? ... They were right: only a handful of us got this break. I wanted to shout at them that I had squandered it. Now that it's all over, hey, I'm not your girl! I couldn't do it. — Lorene Cary

I never thought I'd be on T.V. For me as a kid in Liverpool, it was a more realistic option to be a singer. — Cilla Black

I could no longer afford to be jealous or unfriendly, because, as soon as I was, a bandage came down over my eyes, and I was bound hand and foot and cast aside. All at once a black hole opened, and I was helpless inside it. But when I was happy and serene, approached people with confidence and thought well of them, I was rewarded with light. — Jacques Lusseyran

She had beautiful pale skin, which was a stark contrast to her dark eyes and hair, like black marble and snow. It was very dramatic, like she would be cool to the touch. But she smelled sweet, like candy. No, that wasn't it, Chloe thought. She smelled like Christmas. "Adam's right," Chloe said as she set the bag on the counter in front of Josey. "You smell like peppermint. — Sarah Addison Allen

In my wildest imagination, I never thought that the fifth of six children born to Helen and Buddy Watts - in a poor black neighborhood, in the poor rural community of Eufaula, Oklahoma - would someday be called Congressman. — J. C. Watts

I am thinking of one woman and the rest is blotto. I say I am thinking of her, but the truth is I am dying a stellar death. I am lying there like a sick star waiting for the light to go out. Years ago I lay on this same bed and I waited and waited to be born. Nothing happened. Except that my mother, in her Lutheran rage, threw a bucket of water over me. My mother, poor imbecile that she was, thought I was lazy. She didn't know that I had gotten caught in the stellar drift, that I was being pulverized to a black extinction out there in the farthest rim of the universe. — Henry Miller

I had a tutor who wanted me to believe that mercy is a kind of sorrow and that since evil is the motive of sorrow, evil is also the motive of mercy. I thought that my tutor was old and cruel, and maybe he was - but now I think he was also right. — Holly Black

The CIA currently has in custody two FBI agents and a Boston police detective who is demanding they pay for the damage to his boat."
"He's okay?"
Burns nodded. "Emptied a double-barreled shotgun at a couple of Company lackeys, and then they arrested him. He spent all night claiming he thought they were the Men in Black coming to scan his brain"
Ty bit his lip so he wouldn't laugh.
about Nick — Abigail Roux

Or perhaps a widow found him and took him in: brought him an easy chair, changed his sweater every morning, shaved his face until the hair stopped growing, took him faithfully to bed with her every night, whispered sweet nothings into what was left of his ear, laughed with him over black coffee, cried with him over yellowing pictures, talked greenly about having kids of her own, began to miss him before she became sick, left him everything in her will, thought of only him as she died, always knew he was fiction but believed in him anyway. — Jonathan Safran Foer

The few things I'd sacrificed, or put on hold, to be with my husband and
baby were worth it. That broken boy on the beach seemed like a lifetime ago. Years had passed, college and the NFL, marriage and a baby, but every once in a while, when Jude looked over at me and gave me that slow, knowing smile of his, I was that girl in a black string bikini all over again, longing for a boy I never thought could be mine. — Nicole Williams

I thought you said something about a wolf' I began.
'Yes. That black beast that gnaws at my bones whenever he gets a chance. He loiters in corners and behind doors most of the time, because he's afraid of these.' She indicated the white pills on the table beside her. 'But they don't last forever. It's nearly twelve and they are wearing off. He is sniffing at my neck. By half past he will be digging his teeth and claws in. Until one, when I can take another tablet and he will have to return to his corner. We are always clockwatching, he and I. He pounces five minutes earlier every day. But I cannot take my tablets five minutes early. That stays the same. — Diane Setterfield

Tyler took the beer out of my hand. "You were black-out drunk last night, and you're drinking again. I thought you were going to quit? Do I need to quit with you?"
"I've just lost my sister. Not the best time to stop drinking."
"There will never be a good time if you have to drink every time you're upset. Shit happens. You have to learn to deal with it without alcohol. I love you no matter what, but you need to wake up, Ellie. — Jamie McGuire

I was struck that morning, as I would occasionally be struck the entire time I was in India, by the notion that the town was brown-skinned and black-haired, that their facial features approached my own. There was a solidarity, unexpected, unreasoning, that I felt with the people I passed on the street. They were, during those moments, my people, and though I had my difficulties with the subtleties of their language, thought our manners of dress and thought were distinct, though, perhaps, these people that I passed did not regard themselves as bound together in any particular way, at these instants I would disregard such nuance and imagine a profound relationship between us. Later, during stretches more lucid, I'd marvel at this rush of emotion and wonder as to its source. — Sameer Parekh