Halsey Street Quotes

“Daughters get either their courage or their fear from their mothers.”
― Naima Coster, Halsey Street

“chancletas,”
― Naima Coster, Halsey Street

“Penelope had met white women like her at RISD—women who were certain they were the center of everyone’s world. If someone wanted to steal a handbag, it would be her handbag. If someone wanted to pick a lock, it would be her lock. She was no better than the Manhattan friends Marcus complained about.”
― Naima Coster, Halsey Street

“They smoked and drank as if they were already defeated, hardened, and long out of art school.”
― Naima Coster, Halsey Street

“They all had their trademarks: one did superheroes, another did mash-ups of quotes from his favorite philosophers, one liked painting doorways on the sides of buildings, some open and some closed, and the bike mechanic liked to do flowers and grass, rising up from the street onto pipes and brick. Jon did circles, big multicolored, overlaid shapes, swelling like bubbles across the sides of buildings, bright and emphatic.”
― Naima Coster, Halsey Street

“They had spoken English all those years in the house in Brooklyn, so that Mirella couldn’t remember the sound of Spanish in her daughter’s mouth. When she was a child, Ralph would complain he didn’t understand what the two of them were always chattering about. He told Penelope to speak English at home, although she was already speaking it at school. Ralph couldn’t tolerate feeling left out, even for a few minutes, although Mirella felt that way every day—when someone on the subway asked her for directions and she fumbled her vowels, when the black women at the supermarket stared at her and her light skin as she wandered the aisles, when the white ladies she worked for didn’t look up from their hefty magazines to say thank you and good night, when the teachers at Penelope’s school referred to her as “Ralph Grand’s wife.”
― Naima Coster, Halsey Street

“They think a neighborhood is only about what you can buy—fancy coffee, flowers on the table, a big old house. It’s all just stuff to them, stuff they want, stuff they think they deserve because they can afford it. A neighborhood means more than that. It’s about the people.”
― Naima Coster, Halsey Street

“the feeling she could transform a ruined thing.”
― Naima Coster, Halsey Street

“Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for fish, will give a snake?”
― Naima Coster, Halsey Street

“And although she didn’t know what they would do if they were ever together again—they weren’t the kind to talk or laugh, or even sit beside each other for long—she still craved her girl, as unthinkingly as a seabird longs for the sea.”
― Naima Coster, Halsey Street

“It’s a shame that making room for white folks mean the rest of us have to go. But it’s always been that way, hasn’t it?”
― Naima Coster, Halsey Street

“Pedestrians broke out from underground and onto the avenue. They clogged the sidewalk as they rushed more slowly than usual, through slush and puddles, careful not to slip. Nearly everyone was brown—pale as wheat, deep as coffee grounds, the endless palette of shades in between. These neighbors wore bubble coats and steel-toe Timberlands, toothpaste-white sneakers and hooded peacoats. The white people making their way home from the train were all young. They wore bright scarves and jackets that seemed too thin to be warm. They carried grocery bags from supermarkets in the city; they flicked their unfinished cigarettes into the dirty piles of snow; they laughed into their cell phones.”
― Naima Coster, Halsey Street

“These people are cold, Penelope. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. They think a neighborhood is only about what you can buy—fancy coffee, flowers on the table, a big old house. It’s all just stuff to them, stuff they want, stuff they think they deserve because they can afford it. A neighborhood means more than that. It’s about the people.”
― Naima Coster, Halsey Street

“Ralph swept back the yellow curtain to look out on the street. The leaves were turning red, the whole block ablaze. Across the street stood a barbershop that shared a storefront with a black bookstore. Next door, the hair salon spewed steam onto the street, the fried chicken spot, a jewelry shop with crucifixes and chains glittering on display, and the beauty supply store that blasted soca and flashed neon lights onto the sidewalk. This particular corner didn't have a view of any of the coffee shops that had opened farther east. Those had plush furniture and abstract art on the walls, stainless-steel espresso pumps. They were always crowded with young people in jeans and plaid, typing away on their laptops. There were the bars, too, with a dozen local beers on tap, and short menus that consisted mostly of nuts, pickles, cheese. Penelope could see the changes, of course, but she still recognized the neighborhood - it wasn't like Fort Greene or Williamsburg, which were no longer themselves. Strangers still said hello to her as they lounged on their stoops at sundown. She still had to ignore the whistles from the young men who stood in front of the bodega for so long each day it was clear they were dealing. Church bells rang on the hour and floors thumped with praise for Jesus in the Baptist churches, the one-room Pentecostal churches, the regal AME tabernacles, worship never ceasing in Bed-Stuy. The horizon on Bedford Avenue was just as long, the sirens of the police cars ars persistent, the wheeze of the B26 loud enough to wake her up at night.”
― Naima Coster, Halsey Street

“She had kept the paintings because they were proof that she had once thought art would be her whole life, and not one habit of many.”
― Naima Coster, Halsey Street

“It wasn’t long before more than one teacher had told Penelope that she was trying to draw with paint.”
― Naima Coster, Halsey Street

“for the first time, at RISD, Penelope wondered whether she had been poor.”
― Naima Coster, Halsey Street

“It might be that only artists want their children to become artists.”
― Naima Coster, Halsey Street

“We all make choices to chase our own happiness.”
― Naima Coster, Halsey Street

“life with him would have made her feeble, plastic; here she had her bones.”
― Naima Coster, Halsey Street

“Why steep in someone else’s disappointment? Why linger where you aren’t wanted?”
― Naima Coster, Halsey Street

“Things happened in the neighborhood, yes, and there were kids she knew who got caught up, but there were others, too, who had taken their bicycles out on the street, or walked by themselves to the playground, and managed to survive.”
― Naima Coster, Halsey Street