Not Black Enough Quotes & Sayings

I am Charles Mingus. Half-black man. Yellow man. Half-yellow. Not even yellow, nor white enough to pass for nothing but black and not too light enough to be called white. — Charles Mingus

Yes, being black is a full-time job: sometimes you are invisible, other times you are hyper-visible," he says. "Sometimes you are welcome, other times you are not. The thermostat is always moving and you have to keep adapting to find some comfort level. Richard Pryor used to talk about going to Africa and people there telling him he was white. Even though he was black, he just wasn't black enough. — Paul Beatty

The spectacle shop was old, long, and narrow, with a glass front and a small thin door that opened onto a somewhat busy avenue in the antiques district on the South side of Lovat. It was a quiet enough area, away from the rougher warrens, but not particularly elevated. Across the cramped street hawkers sold vases, while up the road outside a rug merchant's shop a man sold antique suits. There was also Dubois' new storefront to the East; he dealt in religious artifacts and trinkets. The shopkeep hadn't liked when he had moved in; it had somehow changed the feel of the warren. Odd folks had started showing up shortly after Saint Olmstead Religious Antiques opened: black-clad priests, Hasturians in yellow robes, and a few Deeper cultists dressed in their gray sackcloth rags. It had set the entire warren on edge. — K.M. Alexander

Answer Professor Mandell's letter when you get a chance and the patience. Ask him not to send me any more poetry books. I already have enough for 1 year anyway. I am quite sick of it anyway. A man walks along the beach and unfortunately gets hit in the head by a cocoanut. His head unfortunately cracks open in two halves. Then his wife comes along the beach singing a song and sees the 2 halves and recognizes them and cries heart breakingly. That is exactly where I am tired of poetry. Supposing the lady just picks up the 2 halves and shouts into them very angrily "Stop that!" Do not mention this when you answer his letter, however. It is quite controversial and Mrs. Mandell is a poet besides. — J.D. Salinger

Because I'm not a white boy, I'm not white enough for white folks. And because I wasn't born into the middle class, I'm not completely accepted by the mainstream. And sometimes, if you can believe it, I'm not ghetto enough for the mainstream or middle class enough for the ghetto or black enough for white folks! — Vershawn Ashanti Young

They all seemed hungry, happy, and healthy enough in their buzzing - oh the days were hot, and the noise of bees filled the air that was dusty with pollen and sun haze, and there were tiny black flies stuck to one another crowded by the creek and a creek stink rising from the deep pool under the willow tree where a wheat sack of new kittens had been drowned, and their tiny terrible struggling had shot like an electric current through the confusion of muddy water and up the arm of the person who had tied the stone around the mouth of the sack and thrust it into the water; and the culprit had not been able to brush away the current; it penetrated her body and made her heart beat with fear and pity. I was the culprit. — Janet Frame

The door to the situation room door opened, drawing her attention to a tall, lean man with eyes as sharp as razors.
The sound of a metal chair scraping on the tile floor filled the room as Reed shot to his feet, stood at attention, and saluted crisply.
The man stopped, scowled, and heaved a heavy sigh. "All right you clown. At ease. It hasn't been that long since I've been here."
"Just showing my respect, sir," Reed said with a smart-ass grin. "It's not often we're fortunate enough to be in the company of such greatness. — Cindy Gerard

Palo's three older brothers had died in the Paraguayan War, conscripted by the Argentinian government, taken off by force along with all the black men of their generation, because, Palo told young Santiago, they needed a way to not only win their war but also rid this country of us in the process, two birds with one stone. Buenos Aires was too black for them, one third of the population, that's enough blackness to swallow you up! to get strong on you! and so they sent our fathers off to war and opened floodgates to European steamships so that white men would pour into the city to replace us, and their plan worked, the bastarda, look at our city now. — Carolina De Robertis

At present I absolutely want to paint a starry sky. It often seems to me that night is still more richly coloured than the day; having hues of the most intense violets, blues and greens. If only you pay attention to it you will see that certain stars are lemon-yellow, others pink or a green, blue and forget-me-not brilliance. And without my expatiating on this theme it is obvious that putting little white dots on the blue-black is not enough to paint a starry sky. — Vincent Van Gogh

Your challenge as #GIRLBOSS is to dive headfirst into things without being too attached to the results. When your goal is to gain experience, perspective, and knowledge, failure is no longer a possibility. Failure is your invention.I believe that there is a silver lining in everything, and once you being to see it, you'll need sunglasses to combat the glare. It is she who listens to the rest of the world who fails, and it is she who has enough confidence to define success and failure for herself who succeeds. These words were not invented for an incremental life. "Success" and "failure" serve a world that is black-and-white. And as I said before, it's all just kinda grey. — Sophia Amoruso

Humans can't be boiled down to a label or a one-word answer, so good or evil are not enough. We have likes and dislikes, hobbies and passions, love and hatred, some of which are good, others are evil, and still others are somewhere in between. The world isn't black and white, it's glorious bursting color, and we all have a palette with which to paint a masterpiece. — Trevor Parece

The Black homosexual is hard pressed to gain audience among his heterosexual brothers; even if he is more talented, he is inhibited by his silence or his admissions. This is what the race has depended on in being able to erase homosexuality from our recorded history. The "chosen" history. But the sacred constructions of silence are futile exercises in denial. We will not go away with our issues of sexuality. We are coming home. It is not enough to tell us that one was a brilliant poet, scientist, educator, or rebel. Whom did he love? It makes a difference. I can't become a whole man simply on what is fed to me: watered-down versions of Black life in America. I need the ass-splitting truth to be told, so I will have something pure to emulate, a reason to remain loyal. — Essex Hemphill

(The mainstream media) are so vested in our first black president not being a failure that it's going to be amazing to watch the lengths they go to to protect him. They, I believe, will spout this racist line if some of their colleagues up here aren't doing it aggressively enough. There is going to be a real desperation. — Joe Walsh

[Walmart]s largest innovation consists in getting rid of the central Fordist principle of paying the workers enough so that they can afford to buy what they manufacture. Instead, WalMart has pioneered the inverse principle: paying the workers so little that they cannot afford to shop anywhere other than at WalMart. It might even be said, not too hyperbolically, that WalMart has singlehandedly preserved the American economy from total collapse, in that their lowered prices are the only thing that has allowed millions of the "working poor" to retain the status of consumers at all, rather than falling into the "black hole" of total immiseration. WalMart is part and parcel of how the "new economy" has largely been founded upon transferring wealth from the less wealthy to the already-extremely-rich. — Steven Shaviro

It's not politically correct to say that you love one child more than you love your others. I love all of my kids, period, and they're all your favorites in different ways. But ask any parent who's been through some kind of crisis surrounding a child
a health scare, an academic snarl, an emotional problem
and we will tell you the truth. When something upends the equilibrium
when one child needs you more than the others
that imbalance becomes a black hole. You may never admit it out loud, but the one you love the most is the one who needs you more desperately than his siblings. What we really hope is that each child gets a turn. That we have deep enough reserves to be there for each of them, at different times.
All this goes to hell when two of your children are pitted against each other, and both of them want you on their side. — Jodi Picoult

Wherever I go, people ask: 'What is she? What is she?' There has always been an agenda - they're excluding me or including me in something with that question. It is the first thing agents in Los Angeles ask me. And then I'd hear: 'You're not black enough, you're too black, you're Italian - no, you're Spanish.' — Roma Maffia

I am such a nonentity by the standards of our culture that People magazine not only will never feature a piece about me but might also reject my attempts to subscribe to their publication on the grounds that the black-hole gravity of my noncelebrity is powerful enough to suck their entire enterprise into oblivion. — Dean Koontz

It's really not enough to just have black women. A really good idea could be to comment on how they are treated by society. — Lea DeLaria

Okay, here's the secret. It's not really a secret, but I'll frame it to you as one. The same people who despise you for identifying as mixed? Those are the same people who, when you do identify as black, despise you for not being black enough. And there's nothing you can actually do to be black enough, for them. Because it's not really how you act that they despise. It's you. Your very existence." She — Mat Johnson

Up until the mid twentieth century the mountain gorilla was considered a myth. Oddly enough, a legend not unlike bigfoot or the loch ness monster. The chance of actually seeing/experiencing this elusive shadow was as likely as finding ones soulmate. Rare. Precious. Even once discovered they seemed unapproachable. The only way to get close to this magnificent creature was to become empathetic. Abandon all pretense and preconceptions. To bare an open throat. To collapse into the arms of vulnerability. All but extinct, these beings/moments are threatened by the black hearted. The cold and oblivious. The empty eyed profit seekers that overlook these rare precious moments. — Maynard James Keenan

Instead, I cut him. Not deep, but there was enough of a sting in the wound to remind him of what I'd done to the dwarven mobsters in the parking lot - and that I wasn't just some chick with a knife who looked good in black. — Jennifer Estep

In Hamilton's The Universe Wreckers ... it was in that novel that, for the first time, I learned Neptune had a satellite named Triton ... It was from The Drums of Tapajos that I first learned there was a Mato Grosso area in the Amazon basin. It was from The Black Star Passes and other stories by John W. Campbell that I first heard of relativity.
The pleasure of reading about such things in the dramatic and fascinating form of science fiction gave me a push toward science that was irresistible. It was science fiction that made me want to be a scientist strongly enough to eventually make me one.
That is not to say that science fiction stories can be completely trusted as a source of specific knowledge ... However, the misguidings of science fiction can be unlearned. Sometimes the unlearning process is not easy, but it is a low price to pay for the gift of fascination over science. — Isaac Asimov

I am Charles Mingus, half black man, not even white enough to pass for nothing but black. I am Charles Mingus, a famed jazzman, but not famed enough to make a living in this society. — Charles Mingus

Tonight, after we're done with the bank, we're going to finish this. Somewhere it's just the two of us. But if I keep kissing you right now, I'm not going to have enough blodd left in my brain to keep you safe at the bank. — Melissa Cutler

Their eyes, warm not only with human bond but with the shared enjoyment of the art objects he sold, their mutual tastes and satisfactions, remained fixed on him; they were thanking him for having things like these for them to see, pick up and examine, handle perhaps without even buying. Yes, he thought, they know what sort of store they are in; this is not tourist trash, not redwood plaques reading Muir Woods, Marin County, PSA, or funny signs or girly rings or postcards or views of the Bridge. The girl's eyes especially, large, dark. How easily, Childan thought, I could fall in love with a girl like this. How tragic my life, then; as if it weren't bad enough already. The stylish black hair, lacquered nails, pierced ears for the long dangling brass handmade earrings. "Your — Philip K. Dick

I come in with this rock 'n' roll-oriented music, and it's not black enough ... I've always had to deal with this black-white thing. — Lenny Kravitz

It is not enough to have a vision. In order to have its power, you must enact your vision on earth for all to see. Only then do you have the power. — Black Elk

Aldrik laughed darkly. "What did you think I was?" he snarled. "Did you think I went to war and read books?" Vhalla took another step back. "You ran head-first into my daily hell. Would it not be more convenient if weapons of death and torture could not talk back?" Vhalla forced herself not to tremble as she looked at him. He glared at her; the orange of the fire reflecting in the black mirrors of his eyes.
With all the bravery she possessed, Vhalla crossed the distance between them; he straightened and looked down at her, imposing. Vhalla swallowed hard and tried to muster her last scrap of confidence. There would be time later to ask him about the real reasons behind the war. For now, they needed to go home.
She grabbed his hand, praying it didn't burst into flames at her touch. It didn't.
"Quit being stupid, Aldrik. Let's go." His features barely softened, but it was more than enough to know she had made herself clear. Whatever this man was, he wasn't a monster. — Elise Kova

And so when she left, she left for good. But I could not believe she had left for a perpetual journey. She had, I felt sure, left for a place - a place where she could stay long enough for it to matter, long enough for the next leaving to feel as good as the last one had. There is a corner of the world somewhere far away from here where no one knows what "Margo Roth Spiegelman" means. And Margo is sitting in that corner, scrawling in her black notebook. — John Green

Phew!" His small blue eyes shone with repugnance, a look of such unreasoning contempt for my skin that it filled me with despair. It was a little thing, but piled on all the other little things it broke something in me. Suddenly I had had enough. Suddenly I could stomach no more of this degradation - not of myself but of all men who were black like me. — John Howard Griffin

It's frightening enough with a male actor and not a stunt person. If you accidently punch him with the wrong hand, then you've cost them a week's work and they've got a black eye or a lot of money goes on CG to get rid of it. That was nerve wracking, but it was very civilized. Women tend to immediately take responsibility if somebody messes up with both of us saying it's our fault. Men are quite happy for it to be your fault it seems like. — Kate Beckinsale

Loneliness is a state when you have not yet grown to love yourself enough. — Robert Black

I suppose the truth is simply that it was possible for benefits like these to accrue only to a Negro lucky enough to remain in the poor but relatively benign atmosphere of Virginia. For here in this worn-out country with its decrepit little farms there was still an ebb and flow of human sympathy - no matter how strained and imperfect - between slave and master, even an understanding (if sometimes prickly) intimacy; and in this climate a black man had not yet become the cipher he would become in the steaming fastnesses of the far South but could get off in the woods by himself or with a friend, scratch his balls and relax and roast a stolen chicken over an open fire and brood upon women and the joys of the belly or the possibility of getting hold of a jug of brandy, or pleasure himself with thoughts of any of the countless tolerable features of human existence. — William Styron

Emmett Till's murder" instilled in Anne Moody, a fourteen-year-old black girl from Alabama, "the fear of being killed just because I was black." It was the senselessness of the murder of the fourteen-year-old boy that she couldn't get out of her mind, she was to say. "I didn't know what one had to do or not do as a Negro not to be killed. Probably just being a Negro period was enough, I thought. — Robert A. Caro

As the glow of the cabin windows turned to flickers through the trees and then to black, her eyes adjusted and the starlight alone on the pure white snow was enough to light her way. The cold scorched her cheeks and her lungs, but she was warm in her fox hat and wool. An owl swooped through the spruce boughs, a slow-flying shadow, but she was not frightened. She felt old and strong, like the mountains and the river. She would find her way home. — Eowyn Ivey

Becoming aware of these habits and understanding the importance of this agreement is the first step. But understanding its importance is not enough. Information or an idea is merely the seed in your mind. What will really make the difference is action. Taking the action over and over again strengthens your will, nurtures the seed, and establishes a solid foundation for the new habit to grow. After many repetitions these new agreements will become second nature, and you will see how the magic of your word transforms you from a black magician into a white magician. A — Miguel Ruiz

You set me up," I say. "One big con. You can't blame me because I turned out not to be gullible enough. You can't blame the mark. That's not how it works. Have some respect for the nature of the game. — Holly Black

Come aboard, come aboard!" cried the gay Bachelor's commander, lifting a glass and a bottle in the air. "Hast seen the White Whale?" gritted Ahab in reply. "No; only heard of him; but don't believe in him at all," said the other good-humoredly. "Come aboard!" "Thou art too damned jolly. Sail on. Hast lost any men?" "Not enough to speak of - two islanders, that's all; - but come aboard, old hearty, come along. I'll soon take that black from your brow. Come along, will ye (merry's the play); a full ship and homeward-bound." "How wondrous familiar is a fool!" muttered Ahab; then aloud, "Thou art a full ship and homeward bound, thou sayest; well, then, call me an empty ship, and outward-bound. So go thy ways, and I will mine. Forward there! Set all sail, and keep her to the wind! — Herman Melville

I would like to play Pebble Beach at some point. I keep waiting for them to call and ask me to that little pro-am thing, but I'm not big enough. — Lewis Black

Black markets for things exist,' he said slowly, as if confiding a personal secret rather than a commercial fact, 'because the white markets are too strict. In this case, in the case of currencies, the government and the Reserve Bank of India control the white markets, and they're too strict. It's all about greed, and control. These are the two elements that make for commercial crime. Any one of them, on its own, is not enough. Greed without control, or control without greed won't give you a black market. Men can be greedy for the profit made from, let's say, pastries, but if there isn't strict control on the baking of pastries, there won't be a black market for apple strudel. And the government has very strict controls on the disposal of sewage, but without greed for profit from sewage, there won't be a black market for shit. When greed meets control, you get a black market. — Gregory David Roberts

Maybe, Hazel decided, maybe they could both learn how. Not just making-up-stories-in-which-you're-happy happiness, but the real thing. She leaned across the bed and hugged him with all the strength in her limbs, hugged him until her bones ached. But no matter how hard she hugged him, she knew it would never be enough.
"I promise," she whispered. "I'll try. — Holly Black

People thought my mom was crazy. Ice rinks and drive-ins and suburbs, these things were izinto zabelungu -- the things of white people. So many people had internalized the logic of apartheid and made it their own. Why teach a black child white things? Neighbors and relatives used to pester my mom: 'Why do this? Why show him the world when he's never going to leave the ghetto?'

'Because,' she would say, 'even if he never leaves the ghetto, he will know that the ghetto is not the world. If that is all I accomplish, I've done enough. — Trevor Noah

My father's voice had nevertheless remained untainted, inspiring, rebuking, granting or withholding approval. 'You do not work hard enough, Barry. You must help in your people's struggle. Wake up, black man! — Barack Obama

So what? German or French, friend or enemy, he's first and foremost a man and I'm a woman. He's good to me, kind, attentive ... that's good enough for me. I'm not looking for anything else. Our lives are complicated enough with all these wars and bombings. Between a man and a woman, none of that's important. I couldn't care less if the man I fancy is English or black - I'd still offer myself to him if I got the opportunity. — Irene Nemirovsky

I'll make it count, Aelin had promised him. He had bought her time. A wave of black reared up behind the king, sucking the light out of the room. Chaol spread his arms wide as the darkness hit him, shattered him, obliterated him until there was nothing but light - burning blue light, warm and welcoming. Aelin and Dorian had gotten away. It was enough. When the pain came, he was not afraid. — Sarah J. Maas

Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling. This, however, is not generally a part of the domestic apparatus on the premises. I think myself that the thing might be managed with several pails of Aspinall and a broom. Only if one worked in a really sweeping and masterly way, and laid on the color in great washes, it might drip down again on one's face in floods of rich and mingled color like some strange fairy rain; and that would have its disadvantages. I am afraid it would be necessary to stick to black and white in this form of artistic composition. To that purpose, indeed, the white ceiling would be of the greatest possible use; in fact, it is the only use I think of a white ceiling being put to. — G.K. Chesterton

Listen and listen good, shitbrain. If you ever touch someone I love again, I will shove this cross down your throat and watch you choke on it. You want to know why a Prince of Hell wanted me so bad? Now you do. I'm not a nice girl. I'm a Seer. It is my job to save the people of the world from vultures like you. Now you take that back to whoever your boss is and let him come find me, if he's stupid enough. I'll bury you all if I have to. — Kyoko M.

Because I want every kid to be viewed as a person rather than as a member of a certain race does not mean that I'm not black enough ... Do they want me to be positive just for black kids and negative for everybody else? — Michael Jordan

Something that looked like a giant black bee whooshed by them and careened around the curve ahead. She sat up, startled. "What was that?" "Carload of Negroes." "Mercy, what do they think they're doing?" "That's the way they assert themselves these days," Henry said. "They've got enough money to buy used cars, and they get out on the highway like ninety-to-nothing. They're a public menace." "Driver's licenses?" "Not many. No insurance, either. — Harper Lee

We find out soon enough that the universe is not capricious: the child who learns that fire burns and knife-edges cut know that there are inexorable limits set upon his desires. Language must conform to the discovered regularities and irregularities of experience. — Max Black

I look over at Satan's Cat in the corner, and of course she starts it again. She widens her eyes. I sigh loudly, but not enough to deter her. Another staring contest. This is probably somewhere around our fifteenth in two days. It goes like this. Satan's Cat stares into my eyes. I stare into Satan's Cat's eyes. After a few minutes I get freaked out and jump off the couch, usually screaming the same string of trilingual curse words as before because she has the most terrifying eyes in the world. They're amber with long black flecks in them that look like slivers, and I swear after about thirty seconds they start spinning like pinwheels and she's actually grinning at me the whole time - EVEN THOUGH CATS CAN'T GRIN! - probably because she knows she's stretching her evil out and into my brain. Demonic ocular poisoning. I'd Google it if I weren't so afraid of what I'd see. Whatever. Maybe this time I'll win. — Jessica Martinez

but racism is about the power of a group and in America it's white folks who have that power. How? Well, white folks don't get treated like shit in upper-class African-American communities and white folks don't get denied bank loans or mortgages precisely because they are white and black juries don't give white criminals worse sentences than black criminals for the same crime and black police officers don't stop white folk for driving while white and black companies don't choose not to hire somebody because their name sounds white and black teachers don't tell white kids that they're not smart enough to be doctors and black politicians don't try some tricks to reduce the voting power of white folks through gerrymandering and advertising agencies don't say they can't use white models to advertise glamorous products because they are not considered "aspirational" by the "mainstream." So — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

You don't look like a Rupert."
Startled,he raised a black brow at her. "Dare I ask what I look like to you?"
"A hungry wolf."
He didn't laugh at the description, but he did abruptly release her. "Wolf, perhaps," he said drily. "Hungry? Not at the moment."
She had enough sense to guess she'd just been insulted. Had she touched a nerve perhaps? Good,because he was certainly touching too many of hers.
Regaining her balance after stumbling back from him,she went to straighten her skirt in an indignant manner,but forgot she wasn't wearing one.How could she appear to be offended while she was wearing britches? She settled for grabbing the hat off the floor and shoving it back down on her head.
The very idea! Not hungry at the moment? As if she didn't know he was implying she wasn't to his taste. — Johanna Lindsey

When something bad happens to us, especially when we are young, our brains will sometimes protect us from it until we are strong enough to deal with the issue. It's not uncommon for people to completely black out an experience for years and revisit it only when they feel safe enough to face it. — Gwen Hayes

The closest I'd ever got to seeing a naked woman before was black and white cleavage, and then Rosie tossed her clothes in a corner just like they were getting in the way and spun around in the dim light of Number 16, palms up, luminous, laughing, almost close enough to touch. The thought still knocks the wind out of me. I was too young even to know what I wanted to do about her, I just knew nothing in the World, not the Mona Lisa walking through the Grand Canyon with the Holy Grail in one hand and a winning lotto ticket in the other, was ever going to be that beautiful. — Tana French

If you will devote a little time to studying the staggering photographs taken by the Hubble telescope, you will be scrutinizing things that are far more awesome and mysterious and beautiful - and more chaotic and overwhelming and forbidding - than any creation or "end of days" story. If you read Hawking on the "event horizon," that theoretical lip of the "black hole" over which one could in theory plunge and see the past and the future (except that one would, regrettably and by definition, not have enough "time"), I shall be surprised if you can still go on gaping at Moses and his unimpressive "burning bush. — Christopher Hitchens

Now, our Sun will not collapse to a black hole. It's actually not massive enough. — Janna Levin

I advise you to be suspicious of any black American whose family does not claim a blood connection to Native Americans. That's a clear sign of a racial infiltrator who has not done enough research. — Baratunde R. Thurston

Suddenly, the swan dropped down from the sky, flew low over the swamp, almost touching the water, just slow enough to have a closer look at the girl. The sight of the swan's cold eye staring straight into hers, made the girl feel exposed, hunted and found, while all those who had suddenly stopped eating fish, watched this big black thing look straight at the only person that nobody had ever bothered having a close look at. Her breathing went AWOL while her mind stitched row after row of fretting to strangle her breath: What are they thinking about me now? What did the swan have to single me out for and not anyone else standing around? What kind of premonition is this? Heart-thump thinking was really tricky for her. She feasted on a plague of outsidedness. It was always better never to have to think about what other people thought of her. — Alexis Wright

I don't believe pumpkin pie is even made from pumpkin. I mean, how can something that smells that shitty make a pie so sweet? There's not enough sugar in the universe. — Lewis Black

So what's your favorite Synism?" she asked, stepping into the lift.
A corner of his mouth twitched. For a moment, Kiara thought he might actually smile, but he just tucked his hands inside the pockets of his long black coat and the doors closed with a ping.
"Duwad," he said at last.
She smiled. "Which means?"
"You're not old enough for me to answer that. Hell, I'm not even old enough to say it."
-Kiara & Nykyrian — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Pounce had it easier than any of us. No one noticed a black cat in the street. He stopped here and there to sniff aught of interest. Wherever our Rat stopped, Pounce was there, close enough to see up the Rat's nose. I was so proud. Now there was a proper god, making himself useful!
Since my thought might be deemed blasphemy, I said silent prayers to the Goddess and to Mithros. I begged forgiveness and asked them not to misunderstand. Since I wasn't blasted where I stood, I guess they forgave me, or they hadn't heard my blasphemy. — Tamora Pierce

But whatever the academic debate on the topic, Nixon was correct that black Americans "don't want to be a colony in a nation." And yet he helped bring about that very thing. Over the half-century since he delivered those words, we have built a colony in a nation, not in the classic Marxist sense but in the deep sense we can appreciate as a former colony ourselves: A territory that isn't actually free. A place controlled from outside rather than within. A place where the mechanisms of representation don't work enough to give citizens a sense of ownership over their own government. A place where the law is a tool of control rather than a foundation for prosperity. A political regime like the one our Founders inherited and rejected. An order they spilled their blood to defeat. THIS — Chris Hayes

I can help Katy," Blake wheezed. "Good enough for you?"
"What?" I demanded, dropping my hands.
"Yeah, see, you saying her name alone makes me want to kill you. So, no, not good enough for me. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

She glanced pointedly at the flopping tadpole.
"What?"
"Take it back."
"You're kidding, right?" he said disbelievingly.
"Do we have time?"
He considered that. "Yes, but
"
"Then, no I'm not."
"That lake was three hops ago," he said impatiently.
"If you don't take it back it's going to die, and while you may think it's just a pathetic little thing with an abbreviated little life that hardly even signifies in the fairy scheme of things, I'll bet in the tadpole scheme of things it's really looking forward to becoming a frog. Now take it back. A life is a life. I don't care how tiny an almighty fairy thinks it is."
One dark brow arched and he inclined his head. "Yes, Gabrielle." Scooping up the tadpole in one big hand, gently enough that it gave her pause, he popped out.
-Gabrielle and Adam Black — Karen Marie Moning

Teaching Black Studies, I find that students are quick to label a black person who has grown up in a predominantly white setting and attended similar schools as "not black enough." ... Our concept of black experience has been too narrow and constricting. — Bell Hooks

When we black people commit ourselves to living simply as a political action, as a way of breaking the stress caused by unrelenting hedonistic desire for material objects that are not needed for survival, or essential to well-being, we will not be talking about ebonics. We will be out in the streets demanding that the public schools have enough teachers so that all kids, cross color, can read and write in standard English and in Spanish too. — Bell Hooks

No, I don't party; no, I don't dress in black leather and chains; that's not my style. That's how I was raised. I worry about getting good grades and I go to church and I watch sci-fi movies and I generally follow the rules. Most people would call me a geek or a nerd. You've called me that many times. But that isn't everything that defines me. I mean, look at me, sitting here in a rainstorm under a tree that's probably going to kill us when the lightning hits it, holding the hand of a pretty cool girl who really is the opposite of me, a girl that I happen to be in love with. A girl I couldn't have imagined would want to be with me. But here she is, letting me hold her hand, trying to tell me why she isn't good enough for me. That's crazy. — Cindy C. Bennett

Black people loving and losing is something we don't see enough of. We're always in these heightened situations like something big is happening, something funny or something violent. And you know what? Sometimes we die of breast cancer or a broken heart. Things happen that are just not being explored cinematically. It's time we reinvigorated that type of film. — Ava DuVernay

I opened my eyes; how could I keep them shut when I could not sleep? The same darkness brooded over me; the same unfathomable black eternity which my thoughts strove against and could not understand. I made the most despairing efforts to find a word black enough to characterize this darkness; a word so horribly black that it would darken my lips if I named it. Lord! how dark it was! and I am carried back in thought to the sea and the dark monsters that lay in wait for me. They would draw me to them, and clutch me tightly and bear me away by land and sea, through dark realms that no soul has seen. I feel myself on board, drawn through waters, hovering in clouds, sinking
sinking. — Knut Hamsun

My hands were trembling, but only because of who he was, not because I was scared of him. I oddly felt calmed by his presence. He smiled as he placed his hands in the pockets of his charcoal gray pants. He was finely dressed in a black button up shirt that was unbuttoned at the top low enough to see where his chest began. It clung to him, accentuating every muscular detail. I shook my head. I had to stop evaluating him.
"Is everything okay?" Ethan asked, tilting his head to the side, trying to read my expression.
"Huh ... oh, yeah, fine. — Nicole Gulla

You're not just looking up into a curtain of black. You're looking into the eye of the universe. Stare for a while and you start to realize -- on a deep, gut level -- that the moon is a giant rock circling us in space. The sun is a violent, fusion-fueled ball of plasma and gas millions of miles away that destroyed the atmospheres of all of the inner planets (including Mars, which is farther away from it than we are) and would do the same to ours if we weren't lucky enough to have a magnetic field that diverts the solar wind. The cute little pinpricks of light you see out there are other giant, explosive, incredibly pissed-off balls of gas floating in an infinite void, most of which are far more impressive than our puny sun. And that smear of milky white through the sky? That's the center of our own galaxy -- a gigantic pinwheel circling a supermassive black hole like floating detritus around the vortex of a flushing toilet. — Johnny B. Truant

By itself, the Holographic Principle was not enough to win the Black Hole War. It was too imprecise, and it lacked a firm mathematical foundation. The reaction to it was skepticism: The universe a hologram? Sounds like science fiction. The fictitious future physicist Steve passing to the "other side" while the emperor and the count watch him being immolated? Sounds like spiritualism. — Leonard Susskind

It can never be bad to have a foundation as a man - a black man. - in a time when women are dying for men. Women have started to become lovers of each other as a result of not having enough men. — Usher

This research suggests that banning the box is not enough. We must also get rid of the mind-set that puts black men "in the box." This is no small challenge. — Michelle Alexander

Then, as if getting blown up is not enough to worry about, after I take a seat on the steps, I get a look at the choir. Thirty singers and from where I'm sitting, it looks like only two of them are black. It's not like I'm saying suburban white people shouldn't sing. Because I love Van Halen's Hot for Teacher. — Sarah Vowell

The world does not need a 'gay Elvis', for the original, with his black leather suit, pomaded pompadour, come-fuck-me eyes and radiant narcissism, was quite queer enough — Mark Simpson

There could not be a manor house. There had never been a manor house anywhere near Lostfarthing. Nobles did not come to Lostfarthing. It was not possible for a noble to disgrace themselves badly enough to be exiled this far east. The Duke of Entwood had been convicted of black magic, cannibalism, and high treason, and while he'd been burned at the stake, his heirs had only been sent as far east as Blue Lady, which was still two day's travel west of Skypepper. — T. Kingfisher

I guess I should explain. I'm not exactly your typical sixteen-year-old girl.
Oh, I seem normal enough, I guess. I don't do drugs, or drink, or smoke-well, okay, except for that one time Sleepy caught me. I don't have anything pierced, except my ears, and only once on each earlobe. I don't have any tattoos. I've never dyed my hair. Except for my boots and leather jacket, I don't wear an excessive amount of black. I don't even wear dark fingernail polish. All in all, I am a pretty normal, everyday, American teenage girl.
Except, of course, for the fact that I can talk to the dead. — Meg Cabot

Then one day, from the window of a car (the destination of that journey is now forgotten), I saw a billboard by the side of the road. The sight could not have lasted very long; perhaps the car stopped for a moment, perhaps it slowed down long enough for me to see, large and looming shapes similar to those in my book, but shapes that I had never seen before. and yet, all of a sudden, I knew what they were; I heard them in my head, they metamorphosed from black lines and white spaces into a solid, sonourous, meangingful reality. I had done this all by myself. No one had performed the magic for me. I and the shapes were alone together, revealing ourselves in a silently respectful dialogue. Since I could turn bare lines into a living reality, I was all-poweful. i could read. — Alberto Manguel

Barrons's hold tightened further. "Give me one good reason not to kill him. Ms. Lane," he growled roughly around thick, long black fangs. "Because I asked you not to, Barrons. That's good enough. You killed the other princes, and I was grateful. I wasn't ready then. I was still afraid of what I'd become. But this last prince is mine to kill or not to kill. And I say no. At the moment. And although Cruce is incapable of understanding that word, I know you know that a no from me means no. And you will honor it," I said in a voice that brooked no resistance. It was one of the defining differences between the two proud, dark, violent males. And if he didn't honor it, he wasn't the man I believed he was. — Karen Marie Moning

You have compassion but by itself it is not enough. It is almost as if you carry around inside you some dead thing. Some heavy black cinder in your heart that burdens you; a ponderous anchor that tethers you to the past. Until you can burn it away, you can never truly live in the present, in the now. Until you can live in the now, you cannot see things as they really are. Meantime you are a man who is wilfully blind. You have eyes and yet you will not use them. — John Dolan

It grabs me, but not as much as it grabs some of the other people that rave about them. With the Black Keys, I'm missing crescendos with the sax, keyboard or guitar solo. It never comes to me. All my favorite music is rife with crescendo and I'm not hearing enough with them. If you can get the Black Keys to hear this, tell them I offer my crescendo guitar anytime they desire it. — Ted Nugent

The whole glittering nebula of shapes was framed by midnight colors - black, bruised blue, indigo, all textured into intricacy by clouds and the reachless vaults between them. Here, darkness was not simple; it hinted at structures and meanings, hidden activity and watchful eyes. Beacons flickered, miles away, then disappeared behind fog banks. Half-glimpsed ropes twisted and contorted their way up, down, and to every side, synapses reaching to contact the outlier towns and factories of Sere's hinterland. One or two of those ropes, if you followed them far enough, would emerge into sunlight at other nations' borders. — Karl Schroeder

When she started back she saw a blue jay perched atop the feeder. She stopped dead and held her breath. It stood large and polished and looked royally remote from the other birds busy feeding and she could nearly believe she'd never seen a jay before. It stood enormous, looking in at her, seeing whatever it saw, and she wanted to tell Rey to look up. She watched it, black-barred across the wings and tail, and she thought she'd somehow only now learned how to look. She'd never seen a thing so clearly and it was not simply because the jay was posted where it was, close enough for her to note the details of cresting and color. There was also the clean shock of its appearance among the smaller brownish birds, its mineral blue and muted blue and broad dark neckband. But if Rey looked up, the bird would fly. — Don DeLillo

A local white bootlegger, idling under the store awning, accosted Major Stem. "Why'd you call that damned nigger woman 'Mrs. Shaw'?" he demanded. In those days, white Southerners did not use courtesy titles for their black neighbors. While it was permissible to call a favored black man "Uncle" or "Professor" - a mixture of affection and mockery - he must never hear the words "mister" or "sir." Black women were "girls" until they were old enough to be called "auntie," but they could never hear a white person, regardless of age, address them as "Mrs." or "Miss" or "Ma'am." But Major Stem made his own rules. — Timothy B. Tyson

Close to the road a cow would stand knee-deep in the mist, with horns damp enough to have a pearly shine in the starlight, and it would look at the black blur we were as we went whirling into the blazing corridor of light which we could never quite get into for it would be always splitting the dark just in front of us. The cow would stand there knee-deep in the mist and look at the black blur and the blaze and then, not turning his head, at the place where the black blur and blaze had been, with the remote, massive, unvindictive indifference of God-All-Mighty or Fate or me, if I were standing there knee-deep in the mist, and the blur and the blaze whizzed past and withered on off between the fields and the patches of woods. — Robert Penn Warren

They can see everything they want to, but never forget that they cannot see beyond the distortion of their imagination where there is no color and everything exists in black and white. And that is why we will survive, because they do not have what is necessary to defeat us. The real war is between our imagination and theirs, what we can see and what they are blinded to. Do not despair. None of them can see far enough, and so long as we do not let them violate our imagination we will survive. — Lawrence Thornton

A face stared up at her from the mirror beside her hand. Was that really what she looked like? Was that really what she looked like, all sharp lines and huge silver-grey eyes? Certainly, no one would ever call those features beautiful, Jame thought ruefully; but were they really enough like a boy's to have fooled that old man the alley? Well, maybe with that long black hair out of sight under a cap. It was a very young face and a defiant one, she thought with a odd sense of detachment, but frightened, too. And those extraordinary eyes ... what memories lived in them that she could not share? Stranger, where have you been she asked silently. What have you seen? The thin lips locked in their secrets.
"Ahhh!" Jame said in sudden disgust, tossing away the mirror. Fool, to be obsessed with a past she couldn't even remember. But it was all behind her now. — P.C. Hodgell

After tidying the kitchen, Claire walked upstairs and found Tyler in the hallway, lost in thought as he rearranged his paintings hanging there, a series he called "Claire's World," which he'd painted when they first married. She wasn't actually in the paintings, he wasn't a portrait painter, but they were beautiful studies in light and color- leafy greens, black lines that looked like lettering, bright apple-red dots. If she stared at them long enough, sometimes she thought she could make out a figure, crouched among the greens. Claire wondered, not for the first time, what she did to deserve this man, her husband. — Sarah Addison Allen

That's been my fear all along. That I'm not enough, and I still don't trust at all that I am. — Michael Ian Black

If you've gone along with Morgan's plan enough to get this note, then I presume you're planning to go through with it. Let me give you some friendly advice about the toys in this case. First, if you don't know what it is, don't even think about using it. Second, if you don't know how to use it properly, don't even think about using it. (Hint: You don't know how to use the crop, the flogger, or the paddle, even if you think you do.) Third make sure Morgan always has a way to signal she wants to stop, and respect the signal if she gives it. And last but not least, if you ignore my advice, I'm going to come over there personally and kick your ass! Don't think because I'm gay I can't do it. Respect and treasure the power she's putting in your hands, and don't abuse it. (Dominic) — Jenna Black

Apparently there is no profit in the unique, or not enough to make it worthwhile to preserve. Ultimately it drains the life out of us, and existentialism starts to make more and more sense. — Lewis Black

Looking back on my 50-year eclectic journey in research, I am grateful that it has gone as well as it has, although still not clever enough to open the black box of enzyme structure. — Irwin Rose

So it's not an architectural masterpiece. When Da5id and Hiro and the other hackers wrote The Black Sun, they didn't have enough money to hire architects or designers, so they just went in for simple geometric shapes. The avatars milling around the entrance don't seem to care. — Neal Stephenson

ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE is scrawled in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank near the corner of Eleventh and First and is in print large enough to be seen from the backseat of the cab as it lurches forward in the traffic leaving Wall Street and just as Timothy Price notices the words a bus pulls up, the advertisement for Les Miserables on its side blocking his view, but Price who is with Piece and Piece and twenty-six doesn't seem to care because he tells the driver he will give him five dollars to turn up the radio, "Be My Baby" on WYNN, and the driver, black, not American, does so. — Bret Easton Ellis

What are you looking for?" he asked. A car alarm was going off in the distance, and he cringed as if the sound were deafening.

"A ride," she answered. Some of the cars were too new, others too old. She finally stopped in front of a black sedan, nice enough, but not one of the models with fancy security and keyless entry.

"Break that for me," she said, nodding at the driver's side door.

"The window?" asked August, and she gave him a look that said yes, obviously the window, and he gave her a look that said I don't commit petty crimes very often before he slammed his elbow into the glass to shatter it. — Victoria Schwab

The good news for me is that I have an amazing team behind me, and they've been with me for 20 years now - almost 20 years. And they have seen me as an actress, not necessarily just a black actress. So I have been lucky enough for them to see me that way. — Regina King

There is not enough faith in black music at a high level. — Estelle

I'm not so in with the prescriptive avant-garde agenda. I can do that sort of thing, but I feel that I'm still interested enough in song structure. When I look at a lyric on the page, the lyric is alive to me, looking like soldiers in a field. I can move it around, and it's very black-and-white. — Scott Walker