Black Author Quotes & Sayings

He leaned over, catching her lowered gaze. "I'm the present, Darlin'. — Lindsay McKenna

I am shedding.
I am not a new me.
I am my old me in my new me.
I remain, carved with the soul of my knife.
My mess scattered all over my countenance.
I am me.
Take me as I am. — Malebo Sephodi

I see. And who is this author?"
"Neil Fucking Gaiman."
"His second name is Fucking?"
"No, Leif, that's the honorary second name all celebrities are given by their fans. It's not an insult, it's a huge compliment, and he's earned it. You'd like him. He dresses all in black like you. Read a couple of his books, and then when you meet him, you'll squee too."
Leif found the suggestion distasteful. "I would never behave with so little dignity. Nor would I wish to be confronted in such a manner by anyone else. Vampires inspire screams, not squees. Involuntary urination is common, I grant, but it properly flows from a sense of terror, not an ecstatic sense of hero worship. — Kevin Hearne

What an author doesn't know could fill a book. — Holly Black

I maintain that any writer of a book is fully authorised in attaching any meaning he likes to a word or phrase he intends to use. If I find an author saying, at the beginning of his book, "Let it be understood that by the word 'black' I shall always mean 'white,' and by the word 'white' I shall always mean 'black,'" I meekly accept his ruling, however injudicious I think it. — Lewis Carroll

I'm pretty sure I can say that no one in my family ever asked Demetrie what it felt like to be black in Mississippi, working for our white family. It never occurred to us to ask. It was everyday life. It wasn't something people felt compelled to examine.
I have wished, for many years, that I'd been old enough and thoughtful enough to ask Demetrie that question. She died when I was sixteen. I've spent years imagining what her answer would be. And that is why I wrote this book. — Kathryn Stockett

As Nassim Taleb, the author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, writes, "Big data may mean more information, but it also means more false information." And even when the information is not false, the problem is "that the needle comes in an increasingly larger haystack. — Arianna Huffington

Holly is the bestselling author and co-creator of The Spiderwick Chronicles series and won a Newbery Honor for her novel Doll Bones. Cassie is the author of bestselling YA series, including The Mortal Instruments and The Infernal Devices. They both live in Western Massachusetts, about ten minutes away from each other. — Holly Black

When I die I hope it may be said:
'Her suffering was black, but her books were read'. — Shannon L. Alder

Finally, I had held up examples of Goldhagen's inflammatory language and suggested that he had missed the essence of what Primo Levi once called the 'grey zone' of human affairs, described by the historian Christopher Browning as that foggy universe of mixed motives, conflicting emotions, personal priorities, reluctant choices, opportunism and accomodation, all wedded, when convenient, to self-deception and denial. I thought that by marshalling his research into an overly narrow narrative, painted without nuance in black and white, the author had missed the human complexity and the ordinariness of racism. — Erna Paris

Yes I am aware of the rules.
Yes I can totally see how I err the Queen.
Yes it is this very fact of slaying her language.
That gives my soul its melodies. — Malebo Sephodi

Fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge. Only Fools despise wisdom and discipline.
Proverbs 1:7 NLT — Eddie Johnson

On the pavement by the side of the road was planted a banner two storeys high. Even in the blow-up the celebrity appeared stunted. He stood in a safari suit, his palms joined in greeting. His face was a light pink because poster artists did not have the freedom to paint his face black. His little mop of hair was spread thinly over an almost flat scalp. And his thick moustache had sharp edges. Just above his head was an English introduction in large font - DYNAMIC PERSONALITY. A thinner line that followed said he was the honourable Minister S Waman. It seemed appropriate that it was at Waman's black shoes the author took credit, in Marathi and in diplomatically-chosen small font - 'Hoarding Presented by P.Bikaji. — Manu Joseph

I AM GRATEFUL FOR ALL OF THE
BACKSTABBING
BECAUSE IT MADE ME
A STRAIGHT-SHOOTER! — Qwana M. BabyGirl Reynolds-Frasier

I write flawed characters. Ones that do not always make the best decisions and are driven by ambition or lust. They are not black or white, they are in the large space that exists between. — Kevin James Breaux

Meeting writers is always so disappointing. I got over wanting to meet live writers quite a long time ago. There is this terrific book that has changed your life, and then you meet the author, and he has shifty eyes and funny shoes and he won't talk about anything except the injustice of the United States income tax structure toward people with fluctuating income, or how to breed Black Angus cows, or something. — Ursula K. Le Guin

When English author Anna Sewell wrote Black Beauty, in the late nineteenth century, she said that her aim was to "induce kindness, sympathy, and an understanding treatment of horses." Though now considered a children's classic, the book was originally intended for an adult audience. Narrated from the horse's point of view, the novel describes Black Beauty's life, from his earliest memory, of "a large pleasant meadow with a pond of clear water in it" to his wretched existence pulling a heavy load for a cruel peddler. The sentimental and emotionally wrenching book was wildly popular, quickly becoming a bestseller first in England and then in the United States, where it became a favorite of the progressive movement. Sewell's book was the first to popularize interest in the plight of the horse and to generate widespread concern about the beast of burden's treatment. — Elizabeth Letts

Even though Sam wasn't a romance author, he knew all the big ones, the heavy hitters and those that had crossed genres. He was greeted by most of the authors, some he knew and others who wanted to meet the famous author. Needless to say the romance genre remained comprised mostly by women authors. Sam stuck out like a rooster in a hen house. A tall, handsome, cool rooster in black jeans, his sunglasses hooked off the pocket of his pale blue oxford shirt. A rooster with a flock of hens following his every move. — Carolyn Gibbs

Nine years ago, my sister handed me a paperback she had picked up in an airport shop on her way to India. It was a gloomy-looking book, with a black an white photo of a steam train approaching through fog on the cover. Cutting across the top of the photo was . . . an author's name I did not know: J.K. Rowling. I began to read the novel and by page three, I was hooked. — Rachel Falconer

In the same year, the publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique added fuel to the fire of a growing feminist discontent. The author spoke to middle-class White women, bored in suburbia (an escape hatch from increasingly Black cities) and seeking sanction to work at a "meaningful" job outside the home. Not only were the problems of the White suburban housewife (who may have had Black domestic help) irrelevant to Black women, they were also alien to them. Friedan's observation that "I never knew a woman, when I was growing up, who used her mind, played her own part in the world, and also loved, and had children" seemed to come from another planet. — Paula J. Giddings

States. According to Edwin Black, award-winning author of War — Ellen Marie Wiseman

I think I might have something for you today, he says, reaches beneath the counter, and his hand comes back with a book, clothbound cover the color of antique ivory, title and author stamped in faded gold and art deco letters. Best Ghost Stories by Algernon Blackwood, and she lifts it carefully off the countertop, picks it up the way someone else might lift a diamond necklace or a sick kitten, and opens the book to the frontispiece and title page, black-and-white photo of the author in a dapper suit, sadkind eyes and his bow tie just a little crooked. — Caitlin R. Kiernan

What most people don't realize is that when you decide to write and publish a book, it's not for stardom, or for fame, it's because you have a story that's inside of you that is dying to get out! You don't just come up with it one day, it's a thought that evolves into something unimaginable beautiful... — Sontia Levy-Mason

I remember seeing one elderly man look at us, and he held his hand out, and most frightening were his eyes, dark as a soulless abyss, so black that it looked as if it had been blasted from a cyclone. I felt he was looking right at me. For a moment, I thought I was looking through his sockets, past his brain and behind him; as the tears started rolling down my cheeks a godless universe was expanding within me. Then I became hysterical. — Alfred Nestor

Would it be alright if I ripped your clothes?" I breathed out, obviously not thinking about what I was saying or caring in the least. "Cameras," was all he replied. "What?" "There are cameras in the garage," he explained in a deep, hoarse voice. I looked up and saw the big black glob pointed right at us and I sighed. Good Lord, two seconds longer and I would have been on YouTube under the heading, "Author does research in a parking garage. — C.P. Smith

At twenty-one, Richard Wright was not the world-famous author he would eventually be. But poor and black, he decided he would read and no one could stop him. Did he storm the library and make a scene? No, not in the Jim Crow South he didn't. Instead, he forged a note that said, "Dear Madam: Will you please let this nigger boy have some books by HL Mencken?" (because no one would write that about themselves, right?), and checked them out with a stolen library card, pretending they were for someone else. With the stakes this high, you better be willing to bend the rules or do something desperate or crazy. To thumb your nose at the authorities and say: What? This is not a bridge. I don't know what you're talking about. Or, in some cases, giving the middle finger to the people trying to hold you down and blowing right through their evil, disgusting rules. Pragmatism is not so much realism as flexibility. — Ryan Holiday

These Greek capitals, black with age, and quite deeply graven in the stone, with I know not what signs peculiar to Gothic calligraphy imprinted upon their forms and upon their attitudes, as though with the purpose of revealing that it had been a hand of the Middle Ages which had inscribed them there, and especially the fatal and melancholy meaning contained in them, struck the author deeply. — Victor Hugo

Never Be Still unless you're resting. If you're not at rest, you should be taking action. — Brian A. Brown

Black rose, black rose
Who's gonna be your only one?
Who's gonna keep you safe and warm?
Run, run my baby black rose
I'm gonna find you home. — P.M. Highlanders

A story should be managed so that it should suggest interesting things to the reader instead of the author's doing all the thinking for him, and setting it before him in black and white. — Sarah Orne Jewett

All my life I've been involved with racial politics. I was a Freedom Rider in the South. I was the author of books on gang violence, I was a community organizer in Newark, New Jersey, and when I spoke to the Black Caucus, congressional and state, I realized they were going all the way for Hillary [Clinton] and so was the Latino caucus in Sacramento and I asked myself this question: "Do I really want to cast my vote against these people who have been central to my life and to the soul of the country?" And so I went with them. Period. — Tom Hayden

He traced her arched eyebrow. "Every morning when I wake up with you at my side, you're more beautiful than yesterday. — Lindsay McKenna

One morning, as he sat at his desk, he heard the sound of a horse's hooves on the path outside his house. He stepped out on to the verandah. There, on a tall grey horse, sat Morgane. 'I've come to have my picture painted,' she said. She took off her hat and her long black hair cascaded below her shoulders. 'You said you would,' she added, before dismounting. She wore a pair of moleskin jodhpurs and a white shirt, open at the neck. Her skin was radiant from the African sun. — P.B. North

She made a slow turn as she loosened her ponytail and shook her head; her hair streamed down her back like a glossy black waterfall. She finished her spin. Her focus landed on me, and the air caught in my throat. My Wolf stirred.
Clare.
Her body went rigid; her sultry gaze hardened as she stared at me.
Clare Walker. I'd know those moonlit eyes anywhere.
She ran and grabbed hold of the stage right pole. Her feet left the floor as she wrapped her legs around the brass and spun.
What in god's name is she doing working in a fucking strip club? — Elizabeth Morgan

The gimmickry is simply a device, a defense, to obscure the black, blinding, murderous rage and sorrow at the core of this whole story, which is both too black and blinding to look at
avert your eyes!
but nevertheless useful, at least to the author, even in caricatured or condensed form, because telling as many people as possible about it helps, he thinks, to dilute the pain and bitterness and thus facilitate its flushing from his soul — Dave Eggers

Very few conversations with Charles Dickens did not include a laugh from him. I had never met a man so given to laughter. Almost no moment or context was too serious for this author not to find some levity in it, as some of us had discovered to our embarrassment at funerals. — Dan Simmons

In his play depicting the Salem Witch Trials, the author illustrates profound psychological bullying. The ringleader of young girls suspected of unsavory conduct, frightens her friends into silence by warning: Now, look you; All of you. We danced. And Tituba conjured Ruth Putnam's dead sisters, and that was all ... Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night, and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you. — Arthur Miller

Toni Morrison is challenged regularly because she is a black author who writes about the real world. She speaks with so much knowledge about black issues she can't be accused of creating these (issues). People find these issues threatening. — Judith Krug

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

People who think they know what is going to happen next are fools. Surprises - or what the brilliant author Nassim Taleb calls 'Black Swans' - are inevitable. Some are likely to be desperately unpleasant too — Martin Wolf