Eric Chow > Eric's Quotes

“If you let people into your life a little bit, they can be pretty damn amazing.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“Exile is a dream of a glorious return. Exile is a vision of revolution: Elba, not St Helena. It is an endless paradox: looking forward by always looking back. The exile is a ball hurled high into the air. ”
― Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

“You are growing into consciousness, and my wish for you is that you feel no need to constrict yourself to make other people comfortable.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

“So you must wake up every morning knowing that no promise is unbreakable, least of all the promise of waking up at all. This is not despair. These are the preferences of the universe itself: verbs over nouns, actions over states, struggle over hope.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

“If you spent your life concentrating on what everyone else thought of you, would you forget who you really were? What if the face you showed the world turned out to be a mask... with nothing beneath it?”
― Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes

“I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.”
― Bruce Lee

“That, and so many other smaller incidents in my life, made me realize that language, even more than color, defines who you are to people. I”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

“It taught me that it is easier to be an insider as an outsider than to be an outsider as an insider. If a white guy chooses to immerse himself in hip-hop culture and only hang out with black people, black people will say, “Cool, white guy. Do what you need to do.” If a black guy chooses to button up his blackness to live among white people and play lots of golf, white people will say, “Fine. I like Brian. He’s safe.” But try being a black person who immerses himself in white culture while still living in the black community. Try being a white person who adopts the trappings of black culture while still living in the white community.”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

“A work of myriad communications, I learned to speak to the men not with my tongue, which was useless there, but with smiles, hand gestures, even silences, hesitations. I made out people, verbs, abstractions, ideas with my fingers, my arms, and by drawing in the dirt.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous