Sarah Patt > Sarah's Quotes

“If you can read, you don't ever have to be lonely.”
― Maggie Osborne

“Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.”
― Nora Ephron

“Some people say, “Never let them see you cry.” I say, if you’re so mad you could just cry, then cry. It terrifies everyone.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“Be an encourager. Scatter sunshine. Who knows whose life you might touch with something as simple as a kind word.”
― Debbie Macomber

“I want to practice gratitude. I know that sounds hokey, but instead of concentrating on the negative, I want to look at the positive side of life.”
― Debbie Macomber, Thursdays at Eight

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: in love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.”
― Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale

“You are my sunlight in the dark and the ground beneath my feet.”
― Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale

“That's when you know for sure somebody loves you. They figure out what you need and they give it to you -- without you asking.”
― Adriana Trigiani, Very Valentine

“I like it when my mother smiles. And I especially like it when I make her smile.”
― Adriana Trigiani, Viola in Reel Life

“The beautiful thing about the piano is that you got white keys and you got black keys. And the only way to make the most beautiful, magnificent, and poetic noise is with both sets of keys working in tandem. You can’t just play all white keys, because you won’t maximize what the instrument has to offer. You can’t just play all black keys, because you won’t maximize what the instrument has to offer. But integrate the white and black keys together, and that is when the piano makes a joyful noise.”
― Emmanuel Acho, Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man

“And white privilege is about the word white, not rich. It's having advantage built into your life. It's not saying your life hasn't been hard; it's saying your skin color hasn't contributed to the difficulty in your life.”
― Emmanuel Acho, Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Boy

“There’s no White History Month because we celebrate the accomplishments of white people Every. Single. Day. White people have always been esteemed in this country, have always been celebrated. Black people have had to push to celebrate themselves and their culture in public.”
― Emmanuel Acho, Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man

“Do good work, but don’t make the mistake of caring more about your intentions than about the impact of your intentions, or seeking out gratitude or praise. Make sure you aren’t engaged in optical allyship—the kind that goes only so far as it takes to get the right post for social media. True allyship is a commitment to fight this fight for the long haul: long after it ceases to be a top-of-the-fold news item, long after the cameras have stopped capturing it. Not today, but tomorrow, next week, next year, next decade.”
― Emmanuel Acho, Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man

“Everyone, and I mean everyone, has biases. It’s the job of empathetic and considerate people not to let them dictate actions that harm others.”
― Emmanuel Acho, Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man

“Know that when you say you are an ally, you are saying that you are willing to risk your white privilege in the name of justice and equality for marginalized voices.”
― Emmanuel Acho, Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man

“Nobody comes to a game to see the players huddle. They come to see the players execute the plays that are called in the huddle.”
― Emmanuel Acho, Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man

“White privilege is about the word white, not rich. It's having advantage built into your life. It's not saying your life hasn't been hard; it's saying your skin color hasn't contributed to the difficulty in your life.”
― Emmanuel Acho, Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man

“Those of us who know our whites know one thing above all else: whiteness defends itself. Against change, against progress, against hope, against black dignity, against black lives, against reason, against truth, against facts, against native claims, against its own laws and customs. —TRESSIE MCMILLAN COTTOM”
― Emmanuel Acho, Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man

“True allyship demands that it move from conversation to action. And that action will include risks. This isn’t the 1830s or the 1930s, 1950s, or 1968, but I won’t lie to you and say it’ll be easy. The risks might be something as small as a distant social media friend unfriending you. But it could be something more severe, like ostracism from an intimate friend group, job insecurity, public or private ridicule, friction with loved ones.”
― Emmanuel Acho, Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man

“The lesson there is that being an ally means showing up.”
― Emmanuel Acho, Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man

“Let’s think about what this means: race was a political creation, an economic creation—all this hate developed to secure the interest of some seventeenth-century dudes who wanted to get rich growing sugarcane and cotton, who wanted to make sure they’d always be the class on top. Which is to say, racism has always been about power. Which is to say, we invented racism. Which is to say, maybe we can learn to uninvent it, too.”
― Emmanuel Acho, Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man

“What I’m saying is that a white person’s skin color isn’t the thing contributing to holding them back, and that for all black people, their skin color contributes to what’s hard about their lives no matter what other privileges they might enjoy.”
― Emmanuel Acho, Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man

“The simple version is that an ally is a person from an empowered group who acts to help an oppressed group, even if it costs them the benefits of their power.”
― Emmanuel Acho, Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man

“Cultural appropriation happens when members of a dominant group—in the United States, white people—take elements from the culture of a people who are disempowered. It’s problematic for a number of reasons. For one, it trivializes historic oppression. It also lets people show love for a culture while still remaining prejudiced toward the people of the culture and lets privileged people profit from the labor of oppressed people. On top of that, it can perpetuate racist stereotypes.”
― Emmanuel Acho, Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man

“It's not white people's job to police the feelings of black people, but as fellow human beings, please rant black people the right to the full gamut of emotions regarding their wounds.”
― Emmanuel Acho, Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Boy

“For almost a century, black people were not allowed to legally vote, even as their bodies (three-fifths each) were used to beef up the Southern vote. Then they get the legal right to vote, only to face all kinds of nefarious tactics to keep them from it. They then face a justice system not of their peers but white people (in 2017, 71 percent of U.S. district court judges were white), who send them to prison far more often than white people. Once freed, they face yet more obstacles to vote. Should they somehow vote by accident, they face more prison—and should they not vote, well, they have little means of changing the laws and those who make them. A lose-lose situation, whichever way you look at it. That, brothers and sisters, is the nature of the Fix.”
― Emmanuel Acho, Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man

“Imagine the worst insult you’ve ever received. Now imagine that when you heard those words, what you also heard was that you’re second-class forever. That you don’t deserve any of this American dream. Imagine what you heard was: You’re an animal. Imagine you heard, You’re stupid. You’re a slave. My people owned your people, and you were better off when they did. Imagine that you heard, You won’t amount to anything, boy. And the nothing you get is exactly what you deserve. If you can picture one word communicating all of that, then you’ll have some sense of what hearing the N-word does to me and any other black person in America.”
― Emmanuel Acho, Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man

“Our democracy is supposed to be fair and impartial, but the truth is that both Republicans and Democrats engage the Fix to some degree.”
― Emmanuel Acho, Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man