S Ta Quotes & Sayings

I think the sad fact is, there's a long history in this country at looking at African-American as subhuman. And I think that's reflected in the fact that, when we have problems that really are problems of employment, that are really problems of mental health, that are really problems of drugs, our answer is the police. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

your body, was as good as anyone's, because your blood was as precious as jewels, and it should never be sold for magic, for spirituals inspired by the unknowable hereafter. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

America understands itself as God's handiwork, but the black body is the clearest evidence that America is the work of men. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

When you see someone who is not as religious, remember that you were once on the edge of the fire, and it was Allah Subhaanahu wa Ta'ala's favor upon you to guide you. Arrogance will wipe away any goodness from the transformation. — Nouman Ali Khan

Spring, spring! Bytuene Mershe ant Averil, when spray biginneth to spring! When shaws be sheene and swards full fayre, and leaves both large and longe! When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces, in the spring time, the only pretty ring time, when the birds do sing, hey-ding-a-ding ding, cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-wee, ta-witta-woo! And so on and so on and so on. See almost any poet between the Bronze Age and 1805. — George Orwell

Were you in love with Emma?" I ask.
"I was hard-core obsessed," he says without thinking about it. "Not in love."
"What's the difference?"
He's about to throw a stone at ta yard light but stops. "Prison," he says, and puts the stone in his pocket. — Cath Crowley

Recently I heard a 'wise guy' story that I had a party at my home for twenty-five men. It's an interesting story, but I don't know twenty-five men I'd want to invite ta a party. — Joan Crawford

There's a kind of optimism specifically within Christianity about the world - about whose side God is on. Well, I didn't have any of that in my background. I had physicality and chaos. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Is there anywhere else to sleep tonight ... Anywhere?' I pleaded.
There's Mei's office, but you'll have to sleep on the floor I'm afraid.' Mei was one of the Ward 9D dietitians.
'I'll sleep on the floor any day. I'm used to it back in the Islands,' I laughed tiredly.
I settled down on the floor. The three rugs I had brought to cushion my back worked surprisingly well. It was almost more comfortable than the thin mats on the cold concrete floors of the fales in Samoa. The idea of sleeping in someone's office was the best idea I had had all year. I decided that I would keep this secret to myself. — Ta'afuli Andrew Fiu

She alluded to 12 Years a Slave. "There he was," she said, speaking of Solomon Northup. "He had means. He had a family. He was living like a human being. And one racist act took him back. And the same is true of me. I spent years developing a career, acquiring assets, engaging responsibilities. And one racist act. It's all it takes. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Americans deify democracy in a way that allows for a dim awareness that they have, from time to time, stood in defiance of their God. But democracy is a forgiving God and America's heresies - torture, theft, enslavement - are so common among individuals and nations that none can declare themselves immune. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

America's indispensable working class existed as property beyond the realm of politics, leaving white Americans free to trumpet their love of freedom and democratic values. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

I felt that I had crossed some threshold, out of the foyer of my life and into the living room. Everything that was the past seemed to be another life. There was before you, and then there was after, and in this after, you were the God I'd never had. I submitted before your needs, and I knew then that I must survive for something more than survival's sake. I must survive for you. You — Ta-Nehisi Coates

The pursuit of knowing was freedom to me, the right to declare your own curiosities and follow them through all manner of books. I was made for the library, not the classroom. The classroom was a jail of other people's interests. The library was open, unending, free. Slowly, I was discovering myself. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Why, aren't you just about as sweet as syrup on a sundae? I sure would appreciate that, ma'am." He winked. "How'd you like ta stroll the deck of this fine ship with me and watch the sunset? I need a purty girl to put her arm around me and steady this bow-legged cowboy as he finds his sea legs." I raised an eyebrow and affected a southern accent. "Why, I think you're a pullin' my leg there, Texas. You've had your sea legs a lot longer than I have." He rubbed the stubble on his face. "You might be right at that. Well then, how about you taggin' along to keep me warm?" "It's about eighty degrees." "Shoot, you're a smart one, you are. Then how 'bout I jes say that a feller can get pretty lonesome by hisself in a strange country and he'd like to keep compn'y with you fer a while longer. — Colleen Houck

We're on vacation, Kaia, Strider grumbled. You weren't invited.
She waved away his words as if they were unimportant. Deep down I know you meant to invite me, so ta-da. Here I am. You're welcome.
It's scary how well you know us. Here, pay for this, William said, dumping his candy into Strider's arms. We'll be in the care. Making out. — Gena Showalter

I just think that if one is going to preach nonviolence and one is going to advocate for nonviolence, one's standard should be consistent. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Enslaved" is what the plunderer does to a righteous woman but "a slave" is a righteous woman who has accepted the plunderer's law. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Even then, I was dreaming of Raistlin's black robes one moment, and Dorsett's spin move the next. This was what my father deeded
that our Knowledge of Self be more than America, that we understand the brain death that sprawled from the projects to the subdivisions. Consciousness was a beginning, but the imagination could turn straight 18s into paladins in plate, could make warrens in tunnels from graph paper, could pull armies of gnolls from miniatures
that was the Knowledge that ultimately would find a way out. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Both the Shardon and their kin, the Chuns, have similar expressions. In Shardonish, it's Chu'rosh ko'ingar ju'shingu, ishi kimush'ur ta'osh., while in Chunshar it's Cho'ros'ah ko'ingar ju'shingu, esh'i ki'mos'ah'ir ta'ah. Roughly translated, both mean the same thing; 'There is a Darkness among the stars, deeper than space itself.' — Stuart Lynn Sexton

As an African-American, we stand on the shoulders of people who fought despite not seeing victories in their lifetime or even in their children's lifetime or even in their grandchildren's lifetime. So fatalism isn't really an option. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

These were the days when I powerfully believed Breyers and Entenmann's to be pioneers in the field of antidepressants. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

They can ta'k our lives but they can never ta'k our freedom!' Now there's a battle cry not designed by a clear thinker — Terry Pratchett

Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice
And could of men distinguish, her election
Hath seal'd thee for herself; for thou hast been
As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing,
A man that Fortune's buffets and rewards
Hast ta'en with equal thanks: and blest are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled,
That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger
To sound what stop she please. Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee. — William Shakespeare

Our current politics tell you that should you fall victim to such an assault and lose your body, it must somehow be your fault. Trayvon Martin's hoodie got him killed. Jordan Davis's loud music did the same. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Sometimes it is subtle - the simple observation of who lives where and works what jobs and who does not. Sometimes it's all of it at once. I have never asked how you became personally aware of the distance. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

The violence that undergirded the country, so flagrantly on display during Black History Month, and the intimate violence of "Yeah, nigger, what's up now?" were not unrelated. And this violence was not magical, but was of a piece and by design. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

He doesn't believe in using surgically altered . . . uh . . ." My face heated up. Murphy was probably my best friend, but she was still a girl, and a gentleman just doesn't say some words in front of a lady. I held the phone with my shoulder and made a cupping motion in front of my chest with both hands. "You know." "Boobs?" Murphy said brightly. "Jugs? Hooters? Ya-yas?" "I guess." She continued as if I hadn't said anything. "Melons? Torpedoes? Tits? Gazongas? Knockers? Ta-tas?" "Hell's bells, Murph! — Jim Butcher

But the price of error is
higher for you than it is for
your countrymen, and so
that America might justify
itself, the story of a black
body's destruction must
always begin with his or
her error, real or imagined ... — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Cube's album Death Certificate: "Let me live my life, if we can no longer live our life, then let us give our life for the liberation and salvation of the black nation. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

It's kind of selfish to say that you're only going to fight for a victory that you will live to see. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Carpenter: "Call Shen Te, someone! She's good!"
Shui Ta: "Certainly. She's ruined. — Bertolt Brecht

Fhairshon had a son, Who married Noah's daughter, And nearly spoiled to Flood, By trinking up ta water: Which he would have done, I at least believe it, Had the mixture peen Only half Glenlivet. — William Edmondstoune Aytoun

Perhaps there has been, at some point in history, some great power whose elevation was exempt from the violent exploitation of other human bodies. If there has been, I have yet to discover it. But this banality of violence can never excuse America, because America makes no claim to the banal. America believes itself exceptional, the greatest and noblest nation ever to exist, a lone champion standing between the white city of democracy and the terrorists, despots, barbarians, and other enemies of civilization. One cannot, at once, claim to be superhuman and then plead mortal error. I propose to take our countrymen's claims of American exceptionalism seriously, which is to say I propose subjecting our country to an exceptional moral standard. This is difficult because there exists, all around us, an apparatus urging us to accept American innocence at face value and not to inquire too much. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Billy's Adam's apple bobbed. "Don't-" The knife at his throat cut him short.
Black Tom cocked a thick brow. "Don't, wha? Hurt your littl' toffer?" Rotted teeth flashed. "She mean that much ta ye, then?"
Bill licked his lips quickly. His skin took on a grayish hue as sweat seeded over his high brow. "Don't piss 'er off," he managed. — Kristen Callihan

Fear no more the heat o' the sun
Nor the furious winter's rages,
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages;
Golden lads and girls all must
As chimney sweepers come to dust — Pierce Brown

It must have been around that time that I discovered an essay by Ralph Wiley in which he responded to Bellow's quip. "Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of the Zulus," wrote Wiley. "Unless you find a profit in fencing off universal properties of mankind into exclusive tribal ownership." And there it was. I had accepted Bellow's premise. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

The earthquake cannot be subpoenaed. The typhoon will not bend under indictment. They sent the killer of Prince Jones back to his work, because he was not a killer at all. He was a force of nature, the helpless agent of our world's physical laws. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

I think riots happen when communities are under pressure for long periods of time. That's not a mistake. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

One day at the library I found a stack of record albums. I was hoping I'd find ta Beatles album, but it was all classical music so I reached for the first name I knew, Beethoven. I checked it out his Sixth Symphony and walked home. I didn't own a record player and I don't know why I took it out. I had Beethoven's Sixth Symphony but nothing to play it on. — John William Tuohy

I enjoy the challenge of trying to say things beautifully. The message is secondary in that sense. Obviously, I have something that I want to say that's very, very important to me - but the process of actually crafting it is essential. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

A good bra is fine, but a great bra is life changing. It gives you the confidence of a homecoming queen. It's a tiara for your ta-tas. — Helen Ellis

I was waiting at table tonight, on account of it being such a big party, and just as I was coming round with the savoury, one of the ladies went and broke her necklace by fidgeting with it at the ta ble. She thought she picked 'em all up but this one rolled under my foot and I stood on it tight until all the ladies went upstairs. I wanted to give it to you. You're a black pearl, Bertha, that's what you are and it's only right that you should have it. — Daisy Goodwin

At this moment the phrase "police reform" has come into vogue, and the actions of our publicly appointed guardians have attracted attention presidential and pedestrian. You may have heard the talk of diversity, sensitivity training, and body cameras. These are all fine and applicable, but they understate the task and allow the citizens of this country to pretend that there is real distance between their own attitudes and those of the ones appointed to protect them. The truth is that the police reflect America in all of its will and fear, and whatever we might make of this country's criminal justice policy, it cannot be said that it was imposed by a repressive minority. The abuses that have followed from these policies - the sprawling carceral state, the random detention of black people, the torture of suspects - are the product of democratic will. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

The preacher laughed softly. "You know," he said, "it's a nice thing not bein' a preacher no more. Nobody use' ta tell stories when I was there, or if they did I couldn' laugh. An' I couldn' cuss. Now I cuss all I want, any time I want, an' it does a fella good to cuss if he wants to. — John Steinbeck

Caden/Asshole drove a Land Rover.
I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't that.
And it was clean. I paused after I opened the door and could only stand there. It was impeccably clean.
He'd already gotten inside. "Please don't tell me the leather offends you."
"It's so clean."
"Yeah?"
I had no clue what came over me, but I broke out in a "Ta-daa!" and my arms lifted like heaven's gate had been thrown open. A full choir and orchestra played out in my voice. "Behold the gloriousness!" Then I dropped my arms and was met with silence.
He tilted his head. "How much did you drink? — Tijan

Barack Obama's victories in 2008 and 2012 were dismissed by some of his critics as merely symbolic for African Americans. But there is nothing "mere" about symbols. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

I believe Evrard already knows where his lockbox is," Hari calmly explained. "That's not what he wants us for or we'd be in his possession right now. The note was clearly an invitation."
Morganith shook her head, and the distant glow of the streetlights seeped through the cracks of the boarded window, touching her mussed wreath of hair. "Really, Hari? Evrard's invitin' us ta tea after we stole from him? Well, hot damn. Maybe he ain't so bad after all." She set her feet on the coffee table — Ash Gray

I just want to be really clear about this: Anyone who has read Colin Powell's biography - there's an entire section where he talks about experiencing segregation. Colin Powell did not appear when he became head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. That's not how it happened. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Where are we? (Jericho)
Noir's happy place. It's where he brings the beings he wants to play with. (Asmodeus)
Punish. (Jericho)
You say ta-mah-to. I say to-mah-to. (Asmodeus) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Aunt Mercy put down her tiles, one at a time. I-T-C-H-I-N.
Aunt Grace leaned closer to the board, squinting. "Mercy Lynne, you're cheatin' again! What kinda word is that? Use it in a sentence."
"I'm itchin' ta have some a that white cake."
"That's not how you spell it." At least one of them could spell. Aunt Grace pulled one of the tiles off the board. "There's no T in itchin'." Or not. — Margaret Stohl

And I was sorry that I had never felt this particular loneliness before - that I had never felt myself so far outside of someone else's dream. Now I felt the deeper weight of my generational chains - my body confined, by history and policy, to certain zones. Some of us make it out. But the game is played with loaded dice. I wished I had known more, and I wished I had known it sooner. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

This is the practiced habit of jabbing out one's eyes and forgetting the work of one's hands. To — Ta-Nehisi Coates

When I see Bruce Banner becoming the Hulk, it's only a picture. My imagination has to do some of the work there, to impute feeling and everything. We're talking about something that's so surreal, it's just not possible within the world as we know it. So that requires a form that is not so literal. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

You are my Muse..."
~I Belong to You (Mon Coeur S'Ouvre A Ta Voix) — Matthew J. Bellamy

In comics, you have to imagine what happens. I really loved it; I loved collecting. I loved following the adventures and figuring out what was going to happen next. I was a huge X-Men fan; I was a huge Spider-Man fan, and, to large degree, I remain one. It's literature for me; it's art. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

And you are here now, and you must live - and there is so much out there to live for, not just in someone else's country, but in your own home. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

When you read a comic book, there's a space between what's happening on the panel and what you have to literally see in your mind. That's not true of movies, where you see everything. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

The classroom was a jail of other people's interests. The library was open, unending, free. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

One racist act. It's all it takes. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Kids in North Lawndale need not be confused about their prospects: Cook County's Juvenile Temporary Detention Center sits directly adjacent to the neighborhood. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

I wonder if this is it. If I have finally flown too far from home. I think of Ramonda and Ororo. Zuri and W'Kabi. Father and S'yan. But above all, I think of you. and I think of dying out here, of drifting out here, in search of but far away from you. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Among the people in that room, all those centuries ago, my body, breakable at will, endangered in the streets, fearful in the schools, was not closest to the queen's but to her adviser's, who'd been broken down into a chair so that a queen, heir to everything she'd ever seen, could sit. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

When you have a policy of making sure that African Americans cannot build wealth, of plundering African American communities of wealth, giving opportunities to other people, it's only right that you might want to, you know, pay that back. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

The problem of race is deep and wide and requires seismic change. But if we look to government to solve it, we might as well feel hopeless. If we look corporate America to solve it, we'll be waiting a long, long time. And if we agree with Ta-Nehisi Coates, who tentatively suggests that "the only work that will matter, will be the work done by us," then we will truly despair, for we know how well that has worked. If we follow that track, we'll quickly add in disbelief, as he did, "Or perhaps not."

As I've said, the problem of race is not "out there." It's "in here," in the human heart. And though there is no task in heaven or on earth more difficult than changing the human heart,I believe in the one who can do it. It requires a supernatural solution.

Yes, I believe in God. You see, I know how God can change a person's heart. — Benjamin Watson

One cannot, at once, claim to be superhuman and then plead mortal error. I propose to take our countrymen's claims of American exceptionalism seriously, which is to say I propose subjecting our country to an exceptional moral standard. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

The day after I became king, S'yan offered a single piece of wisdom. 'Power lies not in what a king does, but in what his subjects believe he might do.' This was profound. For it meant that the majesty of kings lay in their mystique... not in their might. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

We know Jesus taught that if someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to the left. We know that Mohammed was sacked from his village and stoned at Ta'if, but he quietly left for Medina.
If both of these men, beaten, and bloodied-the incarnations of their respective faiths-asked God to forgive their aggressors, then who were today's religious leaders to advocate holy war? — Eliza Griswold

President Obama's friend and counselor Ta-Nehisi Coates, from his perch atop the bestseller lists and at the pinnacle of power in America, denounces the American Dream, in terms that echo Obama's previous spiritual guide, Pastor Wright in Chicago, as a genocidal weight of whiteness. — George Gilder

It's very hard to be black in this country and hate America. It's really hard to live like that. I would actually argue it's impossible to fully see yourself. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

I think the body is the ultimate thing. The soul and mind are part of the body. I don't think there is anything outside of that. Your physical self is who you are. Some people feel that that is reductionist, but I don't think it is. It's just true. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Later, I would hear it in Dad's voice - "Either I can beat him, or the police." Maybe that saved me. Maybe it didn't. All I know is, the violence rose from the fear like smoke from a fire, and I cannot say whether that violence, even administered in fear and love, sounded the alarm or choked us at the exit. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

When Abraham Lincoln declared, in 1863, that the battle of Gettysburg must ensure "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth," he was not merely being aspirational; at the onset of the Civil War, the United States of America had one of the highest rates of suffrage in the world. The question is not whether Lincoln truly meant "government of the people" but what our country has, throughout its history, taken the political term "people" to actually mean. In 1863 it did not mean your mother or your grandmother, and it did not mean you and me. Thus America's problem is not its betrayal of "government of the people," but the means by which "the people" acquired their names. This — Ta-Nehisi Coates

I'm sitting in the bus station, minding my own business, reading 'Ta-Da!' magazine; a magazine by and for gay magicians, but that's a different story. — Dave Attell

It's hard for me to view Baltimore outside the context of what Baltimore has always been in my mind: a violent place. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

It's much more fun to be the exception, not the rule — T.A. Barron

The truth is that the police reflect America in all of its will and fear, and whatever we might make of this country's criminal justice policy, it cannot be said that it was imposed by a repressive minority. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

What happened ta the other one? The Duchannes girl, with the dark hair?"
Aunt Prue looked at her suspiciously. "Well, Mercy, that's jus' none a our concern. You shouldn't be askin'
anything about it. She mighta up and left him."
"Why would she do that? Ethan, you didn't ask that girl ta get nekkid, did ya? — Kami Garcia

As slaves we were this country's first windfall, the down payment on its freedom. After the ruin and liberation of the Civil War came Redemption for the unrepentant South and Reunion, and our bodies became this country's second mortgage. In the New Deal we were their guestroom, their finished basement. And today, with a sprawling prison system, which has turned the warehousing of black bodies into a jobs program for Dreamers and a lucrative investment for Dreamers; today, when 8 percent of the world's prisoners are black men, our bodies have refinanced the Dream of being white. Black life is cheap, but in America black bodies are a natural resource of incomparable value. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

This is a place that was "discovered" by a dude who didn't know how to read a map, so he just showed up on some shore, thought he was in India, and then proceeded to plant a flag there, like, "TA-DA." No, sir, no. What Christopher Columbus's goofass needed was a compass and a clue for being so aggressively mediocre, but that dude has a federal holiday in his honor. He showed up on someone else's property and claimed it as his because he didn't know what it was. This country started off all the way wrong and continued in the same fashion. Chris — Luvvie Ajayi

Feel it all, feel it all, leave it all behind. Love it and let it go. Let the living live, maybe that's the lesson, my lesson, and maybe within that awareness, ta-da, the path I need to the light of peace will be revealed. — Stephanie Gangi

What did I know of loving anything, beyond a longing, beyond being biased in one woman's direction. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

I took a seat. The garden was bursting with people, again in all their alien ways. At that moment a strange loneliness took hold. Perhaps it was that I had not spoken a single word of English that entire day. Perhaps it was that I had never sat in a public garden before, had not even known it to be something that I'd want to do. And all around me there were people who did this regularly. It occurred to me that I really was in someone else's country and yet, in some necessary way, I was outside of their country. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Jus hold me a little longer, Jack. Tell me again that ya wanna be with me, fer real, cross yer heart 'n' let me know you ain't foolin', cause I dunno how or when it happen but somehow I come ta need ya like air, like blood. Touch me again like ya do with them gentle hands make me feel like somethin' precious. Say it again that ya love me, cause hearin' that was like openin' up some big bottomless well that ran dry years back and it cain't never be full enough now, I cain't never hear it enough, but once more, one more time and maybe I'll believe it a little more, and then a little more the next time, till someday I believe it fer true enough ta be able to say it back ta you like y'oughta hear it said cause God knows I love you more'n my own life, more'n anythin' in this world, but it cain't get outta me yet cause I still ain't the man I need ta be, the man who's gonna stand before you and declare. — Jane Seville

Lot of folks like to mock dumb history, and pretend it's just a few idiots. Isn't. It's the country. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

For my nymphet I needed a diminutive with a lyrical lilt to it. One of the most limpid and luminous letters is "L". The suffix "-ita" has a lot of Latin tenderness, and this I required too. Hence: Lolita. However, it should not be pronounced as you and most Americans pronounce it: Low-lee-ta, with a heavy, clammy "L" and a long "o". No, the first syllable should be as in "lollipop", the "L" liquid and delicate, the "lee" not too sharp. Spaniards and Italians pronounce it, of course, with exactly the necessary note of archness and caress. Another consideration was the welcome murmur of its source name, the fountain name: those roses and tears in "Dolores." My little girl's heartrending fate had to be taken into account together with the cuteness and limpidity. Dolores also provided her with another, plainer, more familiar and infantile diminutive: Dolly, which went nicely with the surname "Haze," where Irish mists blend with a German bunny - I mean, a small German hare. — Vladimir Nabokov

Somebody once told me, black people, in and of themselves, are cosmopolitan. There's cosmopolitanism within the black experience. There's an incredible amount. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Dilly clapped her hands as she bounced on her feet, her excitement bubbling over even more. "They come ta help you, Mr. T. See? I tole ya there'd be someone. There's always someone that comes when you need them. Always, always, always. — Jackie Castle

When it came to her son, Dr. Jones's country did what it does best - it forgot him. The forgetting is habit, is yet another necessary component of the Dream. They have forgotten the scale of theft that enriched them in slavery; the terror that allowed them, for a century, to pilfer the vote; the segregationist policy that gave them their suburbs. They have forgotten, because to remember would tumble them out of the beautiful Dream and force them to live down here with us, down here in the world. I am convinced that the Dreamers, at least the Dreamers of today, would rather live white than live free. In the Dream they are Buck Rogers, Prince Aragorn, an entire race of Skywalkers. To awaken them is to reveal that they are an empire of humans and, like all empires of humans, are built on the destruction of the body. It is to stain their nobility, to make them vulnerable, fallible, breakable humans. Dr. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

What was required was a new story, a new history told through the lens of our struggle. I had always known this, had heard the need for a new history in Malcolm, had seen the need addressed in my father's books. It was in the promise behind their grand titles - Children of the Sun, Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Kushite Empire, The African Origins of Civilization. Here was not just our history but the history of the world, weaponized to our noble ends. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

I was about 13 or 14 when I heard Malcolm X's speech 'Message to the Grass Roots.' — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Perhaps being named "black" was just someone's name for being at the bottom, a human turned to object, object turned to pariah. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Goodfellow?" Glitch stared at Puck nervously. "Robin Goodfellow?"
"Oh, look at that, he's heard of me. My fame grows." Puck snorted and leaped off the roof. In midair, he became a giant black raven, who swooped toward us with a raucous cry before dropping into the circle as Puck in an explosion of feathers. "Ta-daaaaaaaaaa. — Julie Kagawa

She knew that the galaxy itself could kill me, that all of me could be shattered and all of her legacy spilled upon the curb like bum wine. And no one would be brought to account for this destruction, because my death would not be the fault of any human but the fault of some unfortunate but immutable fact of "race", imposed upon an innocent country by the inscrutable judgement of invisible gods. The earthquake cannot be subpoenaed. The typhoon will not bend under indictment. They sent the killer of Prince Jones back to his work, because he was not a killer at all. He was a force of nature, the helpless agent of our world's physical laws. This entire episode took me from fear to a rage that burned in me then, animates me now, and will likely leave me on fire for the rest of my days. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

He glanced up as I entered, and for a moment, looked almost surprised.
"Mr. Swift!"
"Ta-da!" I exclaimed weakly.
"You're still ... "
"Still not dead. That's me. It's my big party trick, still not being dead, gets them every time. — Kate Griffin

What sets black people apart is not some deficit in personal responsibility. It's the weight on our shoulders. That is what's actually different. We have the weight and burden of history. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

I was made for the library, not the classroom. The classroom was a jail of other people's interests. The library is open, unending, free. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

If I could have chosen a flag back then, it would have been embroidered with a portrait of Malcolm X, dressed in a business suit, his tie dangling, one hand parting a window shade, the other holding a rifle. The portrait communicated everything I wanted to be - controlled, intelligent, and beyond the fear. I would buy tapes of Malcolm's speeches - "Message to the Grassroots," "The Ballot or the Bullet" - down at Everyone's Place, a black bookstore on North Avenue, and play them on my Walkman. Here was all the angst I felt before the heroes of February, distilled and quotable. "Don't give up your life, preserve your life," he would say. "And if you got to give it up, make it even-steven." This was not boasting - it was a declaration of equality rooted not in better angels or the intangible spirit but in the sanctity of the black body. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

At the onset of the Civil War, our stolen bodies were worth four billion dollars, more than all of American industry, all of American railroads, workshops, and factories combined, and the prime product rendered by our stolen bodies - cotton - was America's primary export. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ya smell like sun," he murmured. D's voice was raw, like a man under hypnosis. "Ya know that smell? That toasty-skin smell, like ya get after goin' ta the beach?" He nodded a little. "I love that smell." He straightened, eyes lowered to the ground. "Reminds me a workin' on the ranch, when I was a kid. Ridin' with my brother, up in the hills, sun beatin' down turnin' our necks brown, our hands."
Jack didn't dare speak, or breathe, or make the tiniest move to disturb the so-rare Reverie. This glimpse into D's secret mind was like having a skittish deer approach him on a wooded trail; one false move and it would dart away into the brush, leaving him with only a flash of white tail before vanishing. — Jane Seville