Kidada > Kidada's Quotes

“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
― Toni Morrison

“I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio. I never asked [James] Joyce not to mention Catholicism or the world of Dublin. Never. And I don't know why I should be asked to explain your life to you. We have splendid writers to do that, but I am not one of them. It is that business of being universal, a word hopelessly stripped of meaning for me. Faulkner wrote what I suppose could be called regional literature and had it published all over the world. That's what I wish to do. If I tried to write a universal novel, it would be water. Behind this question is the suggestion that to write for black people is somehow to diminish the writing. From my perspective there are only black people. When I say 'people,' that's what I mean.”
― Toni Morrison

“Learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at the rest.”
― Herman Hesse

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
― Mark Twain

“The underground of the city is like what's underground in people. Beneath the surface, it's boiling with monsters.”
― Guillermo Del Toro

“The real tragedy of our postcolonial world is not that the majority of people had no say in whether or not they wanted this new world; rather, it is that the majority have not been given the tools to negotiate this new world.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun

“There are some things that are so unforgivable that they make other things easily forgivable.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.”
― James Baldwin

“The music in his laughter had a way of rounding off the missing notes in her soul.”
― Gloria Naylor, Linden Hills

“Reading was my escape and my comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the beautiful stillness that surrounds you when you hear an author's words reverberating in your head.”
― Paul Auster, The Brooklyn Follies

“You couldn't relive your life, skipping the awful parts, without losing what made it worthwhile. You had to accept it as a whole--like the world, or the person you loved.”
― Stewart O'Nan, The Odds: A Love Story

“Basically, I have been compelled by curiosity.”
― Mary Leakey

“You must never behave as if your life belongs to a man. Do you hear me?” Aunty Ifeka said. “Your life belongs to you and you alone.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun

“When I offered the word "Womanism" many years ago, it was to give us a tool to use, as feminist women of color, in times like these. These are the moments we can see clearly, and must honor devotedly, our singular path as women of color in the United States. We are not white women and this truth has been ground into us for centuries, often in brutal ways. ”
― Alice Walker

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“The man who satisfies a ceaseless intellectual curiousity probably squeezes more out of life in the long run than anyone else.”
― Edmund Gosse

“A bit of trash now and then is good for the severest reader. It provides the necessary roughage in the literary diet.”
― Phyllis McGinley

“...have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show. Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me. And I think all the other folks did too. They come to church to share God, not find God.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

“I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ask. And that in wondering bout the big things and asking bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I wonder, the more I love.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

“Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing.”
― August Wilson

“Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.”
― Margaret Fuller

“The “underground railroad” should be understood not as a single entity but as an umbrella term for local groups that employed numerous methods to assist fugitives, some public and entirely legal, some flagrant violations of the law.”
― Eric Foner, Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad

“Black trauma is never given space to heal because we have to make sure the white people who hurt us don’t feel too bad about it. Even as victims, we’re told to care about the feelings of those who harm us.”
― Luvvie Ajayi, I'm Judging You: The Do-Better Manual

“Wisdom means to choose now what will make sense later. I am learning everyday to allow the space between where I am and where I want to be, to inspire me and not terrify me.”
― Tracee Ellis Ross

“We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks