Veronica Chambers > Quotes

“The only thing I knew to do with a man was what I'd learned from my parents: to fight or not fight. I had no idea how to craft a partnership beyond that one basic thing.”
― Veronica Chambers

“I wanted to walk into the library on Fifth Avenue with the lions sitting outside and be able to look up my name in the card catalog. I wanted those walls to have just one book with my name on it.”
― Veronica Chambers, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves

“That while I wanted to write with the narrative bravado of Toni Morrison, it might be okay if I started with something less ambitious than a book like beloved.”
― Veronica Chambers, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves

“It seemed like there was no shortage of things for us to talk about: it was like we were, in dialogue, reading a book that had no chapters and no end. There seemed to be no place to break. We walked each other back and forth until our mothers threatened to take a switch to our behinds. In this very literal way, I came to think of a homegirl as someone with whom the soul conversation is so deep and so stirring that you keep walking each other home.”
― Veronica Chambers, The Meaning of Michelle: 15 Writers on the Iconic First Lady and How Her Journey Inspires Our Own

“Writing is architectural. Letters become words, and words become sentences, and sentences become paragraphs, and paragraphs become chapters and chapters become books.”
― Veronica Chambers

“Beyonce 1.0 had arrived, and the way she held the camera's gaze made us feel as if hers was a party we were all invited to.”
― Veronica Chambers, Queen Bey: A Celebration of the Power and Creativity of Beyoncé Knowles-Carter

“I sat in my little Brooklyn apartment and tried to listen: listen for the voice of my mother, listen for the singsong voices of my grandmothers, both passed away. Jamaica Kincaid taught me that the women I loved might not have been known to many people in the world but they were opera singers. They had beauty in their voices; great dramas were at the cruxes of their lives. And if I could catch those voices - the way they loved, the way they taught, the way they turned their faces away in pain, and how they stood in their own power-then their words on the page might become a song worth singing.”
― Veronica Chambers, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves

“I now know the same secret that Michelle does: in order to have it all we can't do it all.”
― Veronica Chambers, The Meaning of Michelle: 16 Writers on the Iconic First Lady and How Her Journey Inspires Our Own

“Whenever I think about Michelle Obama, I think, “When I grow up, I want to be just like her.” I want to be that intelligent, confident, and comfortable in my own skin.”
― Veronica Chambers, The Meaning of Michelle: 15 Writers on the Iconic First Lady and How Her Journey Inspires Our Own

“quinceañera. Case closed.” Carmen and Jamie exchanged”
― Veronica Chambers, A Formal Affair