Ibrahim > Ibrahim's Quotes

“We are
Born like this
Into this
Into these carefully mad wars
Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
Into bars where people no longer speak to each other
Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings
Born into this
Into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die
Into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty
Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes”
― Charles Bukowski

“Baldwin’s essays forced you to turn inward and confront whatever pain was there, and I did not want to do that. I damn sure didn’t know what to do with my pain philosophically.”
― Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own

“There has never been a mechanism, through something like a truth and reconciliation commission, for telling ourselves the truth about what we have done in a way that would broadly legitimate government policies to repair systemic discrimination across generations. Instead, we pine for national rituals of expiation that wash away our guilt without the need for an admission of guilt,”
― Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own

“Baldwin and King, no matter the temperamental distance between them, moved together as they struggled to make real the promise of American democracy. King was the preacher, Baldwin the poet—and, of course, the two are interchangeable.”
― Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own

“We have to get the facts right as best as we can. Otherwise, history becomes what Du Bois referred to as “lies agreed upon.”
― Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own

“only [people] could trust that “thing,” they would be less afraid of being touched, less afraid of loving each other, less afraid of being changed by each other. Life would be different. Our children would not be the victims that they are now, we would not be either. But for some reason love is the most frightful thing; something that the human being is most in need of and dreads most.”
― Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own

“the truth can be both horrible and lovely at the same time.”
― Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

“You should not expect a monster to change, even at the end of a fairy tale. For in a children’s story, the monster must be killed. If he remains alive, his nature will be limned. There is no gentling of an abomination.”
― Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

“Go and do your business, Mr Nayler. There will soon be heads on spikes all over London. But bear in mind that one day one of them may be mine.”
― Robert Harris, Act of Oblivion

“Learned minds can still believe wicked things, especially when their own interests are at stake.”
― Robert Harris, Act of Oblivion

“Something was wrong, very wrong. This was not a dull, throbbing pain, like a headache; it wasn’t even a piercing, stabbing pain, like the pancreatitis I’d had when I was thirty. This was a different kind of Pain. Like my body was going to burst. Like my insides were trying to force their way out. This was the no-fucking-around kind of Pain.”
― Matthew Perry, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing

“I think you actually have to have all of your dreams come true to realize they are the wrong dreams.”
― Matthew Perry, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing

“Man was born in sin. He struggled. He erred. He fell.”
― Robert Harris, Act of Oblivion

“He felt a sudden exultation in his singularity. Well, damn the world for its superstition.”
― Robert Harris, Act of Oblivion

“How fortunate the man who never knew doubt.”
― Robert Harris, Act of Oblivion

“Looking out from his window, he felt he had been granted a glimpse of a great truth, one that had been whispering at his conscience for many years: that God was not to be pressed into service merely to suit the needs of men, however righteous they believed their cause to be; that such presumption was itself a sin. He felt both despair and a bitter vindication.”
― Robert Harris, Act of Oblivion

“Cromwell had the power, but to what end? Each time he tried to restore Parliament, it antagonised him, and he dissolved it. The army was divided, the country sullen. He lived in a trap of his own making.”
― Robert Harris, Act of Oblivion

“When we allow ourselves to celebrate tiny victories as important and meaningful, we start to understand the incremental nature of change—how one vote can help change our democracy; how raising a child who is whole and loved can help change a nation; how educating one girl can change a whole village for the better.”
― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times

“when it does work, it can feel like an actual, honest-to-god miracle, which is what love is, after all. That’s the whole point. Any long-term partnership, really, is an act of stubborn faith.”
― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times

“When someone chooses to lift the curtain on a perceived imperfection in her story, on a circumstance or condition that traditionally might be considered to be a weakness, what she’s often actually revealing is the source code for her steadiness and strength.”
― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times

“As we saw in the 2016 election, it can be presumptuous to assume everything will work out in your favor, and dangerous to leave your fate entirely in the hands of others when it comes to choosing your leaders. We have to make hopeful choices, to commit and recommit to the work involved.”
― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times

“I wanted to know whether you could ever fully know someone. If knowing how they were—how they moved and spoke and the faces they made and the things they tried not to look at—amounted to knowing them. Or if knowing things about them—where they’d been born, all the people they’d been, who they’d loved, the worlds they’d come from—added up to anything.”
― Emily Henry, Beach Read

“Rufus thought, But it’s not possible to forget anybody you were that hung up on, who was that hung up on you. You can’t forget anything that hurt so badly, went so deep, and changed the world forever. It’s not possible to forget anybody you’ve destroyed.”
― James Baldwin, Another Country

“Judgment,” she said, “has nothing to do with love.”
― James Baldwin, Another Country

“I have no wish to stay here,” he said, “in this wretched mausoleum of a country. Let us go to New York. I will make my future there. There is no future here, for a boy like me.”
― James Baldwin, Another Country

“Perhaps if you can accept the pain that almost kills you, you can use it, you can become better.”
― James Baldwin, Another Country

“The universe, he felt, was just—or if not just, fair enough.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“when he was gone, we all wished we’d had him just a little bit longer.”
― Dave Itzkoff, Robin

“Why wouldn’t you tell someone you loved them? Once you loved someone, you repeated it until they were tired of hearing it. You said it until it ceased to have meaning. Why not? Of course, you goddamn did.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“For they had lived together long enough to know that love was always love, anytime and anyplace, but it was more solid the closer it came to death.”
― Gabriel García Márquez