The Black Geek > The Black Geek's Quotes

“No black woman writer in this culture can write "too much". Indeed, no woman writer can write "too much"...No woman has ever written enough.”
― bell hooks, Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work

“Beyond work and love, I would add two other ingredients that give meaning to life. First, to fulfill whatever talents we are born with. However blessed we are by fate with different abilities and strengths, we should try to develop them to the fullest, rather than allow them to atrophy and decay. We all know individuals who did not fulfill the promise they showed in childhood. Many of them became haunted by the image of what they might have become. Instead of blaming fate, I think we should accept ourselves as we are and try to fulfill whatever dreams are within our capability.

Second, we should try to leave the world a better place than when we entered it. As individuals, we can make a difference, whether it is to probe the secrets of Nature, to clean up the environment and work for peace and social justice, or to nurture the inquisitive, vibrant spirit of the young by being a mentor and a guide.”
― Michio Kaku

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“Don't feel sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“People aren't social, they're tribal. Race doesn't exist, but tribes are fucking real.”
― Mat Johnson, Loving Day

“What I discovered during my studies in Poe's and other early Americans' texts was the intellectual source of racial Whiteness. Here, in these pages, was the very fossil record of how this odd and illogical sickness formed. Here was the twisted mythic underpinnings of modern racial thought that could never before be dismantled because we were standing on them.”
― Mat Johnson, Pym

“Since White America refuses to see its past, they can't really see me either. Add to that a little of Madame C.J.s magic and watch me go invisible. Watch me step outside of history. Assimilation as revolution. That's one thing that most of us know that white folks don't. Race doesn't really exist. Culture? Ethnicity? Sure. Class too. But race is just a bunch of rules meant to keep us on the bottom. Race is a strategy. The rest is just people acting playing roles.”
― Mat Johnson, Incognegro

“Some people age, and some just dehydrate.”
― Mat Johnson

“Curing America’s racial pathology couldn’t be done with good intentions or presidential elections.”
― Mat Johnson, Pym

“Every misogynist came out of a woman.”
― Mat Johnson

“It is a great moment in every freak's life when he or she finds out that at least they are not the only one.”
― Mat Johnson, Pym

“She did not want to say it, because it made no practical sense, but in the end she went to Japan for the delicate sake cups, resting in her hand like a blossom; she went to Japan for loveliness.”
― ZZ Packer, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

“The most intelligent people disguise the fact that they are intelligent. Wise men do not wear name tags. The more people talk about their own skills, the more desperate they are—their work should speak for itself.”
― Tsugumi Ohba

“Just because I am alone, does not mean I am lonely. I am not you.”
― Tsugumi Ohba, Death Note Box Set

“There are going to be times when you learn more about the world you’re entering and feel defeated when you see the gap between the ideal and the reality… But that’s something we’ll all face. The people that face those obstacles and overcome them are people whose dreams come true.”
― Tsugumi Ohba, Bakuman, Volume 3: Debut and Impatience

“Justice will prevail!”
― Tsugumi Ohba

“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

“Physicists are made of atoms. A physicist is an attempt by an atom to understand itself.”
― Michio Kaku, Parallel Worlds: A Journey through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos

“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”
― haruki murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“What happens when people open their hearts?"
"They get better.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“I dream. Sometimes I think that's the only right thing to do.”
― Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart

“All social inequities are linked. Comprehensive systemic change will happen only if we are aware of these connections and work to bring an end to all inequalities—not just our favorites or the ones that most directly affect our part of the universe. No one is on the sidelines; by our actions or inactions, by our caring or our indifference, we are either part of the problem or part of the solution.”
― A. Breeze Harper, Sistah Vegan

“When art sets racism in the past, no matter how good it is, it allows white people in the audience (and others) to say to themselves "Wow! That racism sure was bad way back then!" It's what happens when people go see 12 Years a Slave. My response is always, "Yeah, you wanna know another time when racism was bad? Earlier today.”
― W. Kamau Bell, The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell: Tales of a 6' 4", African American, Heterosexual, Cisgender, Left-Leaning, Asthmatic, Black and Proud Blerd, Mama's Boy, Dad, and Stand-Up Comedian

“You don't have to love me but you damn well have to respect me.”
― Toni Morrison, God Help the Child

“for far longer: Blacks were enslaved in this country for 244 years, from 1619 to 1863. As of 2010, they have been free for 147 years.”
― Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

“If you brave enough to live it, the least I can do is listen.”
― Cynthia Bond, Ruby

“One of the best guides to how to be self-loving is to give ourselves the love we are often dreaming about receiving from others. There was a time when I felt lousy about my over-forty body, saw myself as too fat, too this, or too that. Yet I fantasized about finding a lover who would give me the gift of being loved as I am. It is silly, isn't it, that I would dream of someone else offering to me the acceptance and affirmation I was withholding from myself. This was a moment when the maxim "You can never love anybody if you are unable to love yourself" made clear sense. And I add, "Do not expect to receive the love from someone else you do not give yourself.”
― Bell Hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“Life is too short to be lived badly.”
― Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

“Once again, I arrived at my usual conclusion: one must educate oneself.”
― Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood