Nathan > Nathan's Quotes

“Perseverance in almost any plan is better than fickleness and fluctuation. (Alexander Hamilton, July 1792)”
― Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton

“The law is whatever is successfully argued and plausibly maintained,”
― Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton

“I rationalized that there are only so many notes and therefore only so many combination of notes, so it stood to reason that there are so many songs.”
― Paul Beatty, The White Boy Shuffle

“I'd stand still for a few seconds, vainly snapping my fingers with as much hope of catching the beat as a quadriplegic hobo latching on to a moving boxcar.”
― Paul Beatty

“Whoever is born in New York is ill-equipped to deal with any other city: all other cities seem, at best, a mistake, and, at worst, a fraud.”
― James Baldwin, Just Above My Head

“Sometimes you hear a person speak the truth and you know that they are speaking the truth. But you also know that they have not heard themselves, do not know what they have said: do not know that they have revealed much more than they have said. This may be why the truth remains, on the whole, so rare.”
― James Baldwin, Just Above My Head

“In my forties, I chose to take my pain and turn it into compassion, and not hate. Whenever I experienced pain of any origin I always made a promise to myself never to do anything that would cause someone else to suffer the pain I was feeling in that moment. I still had moments of bitterness and anger. But by then I had the wisdom to know that bitterness and anger are destructive. I was dedicated to building things, not tearing them down.”
― Albert Woodfox, Solitary: Unbroken by Four Decades in Solitary Confinement

“I forced myself to learn how not to give in to fear. That was one of my greatest achievements in those years. I didn’t let fear rule me.”
― Albert Woodfox, Solitary: Unbroken by Four Decades in Solitary Confinement

“Instead of showing you how to build courage," I wrote in response to someone asking me how to be brave, "I write to you to pay tribute to and salute your courage. I embrace your courage. I lie down every night loving your courage. When I am in need of purpose of focus I thank your courage. Courage is not an ongoing thing that you walk around feeling ever day. Like anything in life, it comes and goes with the challenges we meet every day of our lives!”
― Albert Woodfox, Solitary: Unbroken by Four Decades in Solitary Confinement

“I used to tell myself, “If you can breathe you can get through anything.”
― Albert Woodfox, Solitary: Unbroken by Four Decades in Solitary Confinement

“For where does one run to when he’s already in the promised land?”
― Claude Brown, Manchild in the Promised Land

“Reno was somebody from the streets. I think he took to me because he saw me as somebody from the streets, somebody who hated to see the sun go down on Eighth Avenue, who would run up on Amsterdam Avenue, follow the sun down the hill, across Broadway, to the Drive and the Hudson River, and then would wait for the sun to come back. I guess Reno thought he'd found somebody who was destined to be in the streets of Harlem for the rest of his life.”
― Claude Brown, Manchild in the Promised Land

“the most offensive is not their lying—one can always forgive lying—lying is a delightful thing, for it leads to truth—what is offensive is that they lie and worship their own lying…”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Live every minute as if you are late for the last train.”
― Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York

“Part of moving up in the world is realizing how much shit you used to eat.”
― Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle

“His cousin Freddy brought him in on the heist one hot night in early June.

It was such a pretty block and on certain nights when it was cool and quiet it was as if you didn’t live in the city at all.”
― Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle

“Entrepreneur?” Pepper said the last part like manure. “That’s just a hustler who pays taxes.”
― Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle

“Alma used the word settled the way less genteel people used motherfucker, as a chisel to pry open a particular feeling.”
― Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle

“from one place but more important was where you decided to go.”
― Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle

“Crooks and civilians need to congregate every once in a while to reinforce their life decisions.”
― Colson Whitehead

“Do we judge a man by the weight of the envelope-or whom he gives it to?”
― Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle

“Strivers grasped for something better-and crooks schemes about how to manipulate the present system. The world as it might be versus the world as it was. But perhaps Carney was being too stark. Plenty of crooks were strivers, and plenty of strivers bent the law.”
― Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle

“Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”
― Mark Twain

“All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God Novel

“He who does not hurry manages to get everywhere”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, Heart of a Dog

“The young man knows the rules but the old man knows the exceptions.”
― Oliver Wendell Holmes

“Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“A guy and a girl can be just friends, but at one point or another, they will fall for each other...Maybe temporarily, maybe at the wrong time, maybe too late, or maybe forever”
― Dave Matthews Band

“The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.”
― Ernest Hemingway, Men Without Women