Danez Smith > Quotes

“...paradise is a world where everything
is a sanctuary & nothing is a gun...”
― Danez Smith, Don't Call Us Dead

“& how many times have you loved me without my asking? how often have i loved a thing because you loved it? including me”
― Danez Smith, Homie

“who knew my haven
would be my coffin?

dead is the safest i've ever been.
i've never been so alive.”
― Danez Smith, Don't Call Us Dead

“some of us are killed in pieces, some of us all at once // do i think someone created AIDS? maybe. i don’t doubt that anything is possible in a place where you can burn a body with less outrage than a flag”
― Danez Smith, Don't Call Us Dead: Poems

“history is what it is. it knows what it did.”
― Danez Smith

“i’ll plant a garden on top where your hurt stopped.”
― Danez Smith, Don't Call Us Dead: Poems

“Dear badge number.


What did I do wrong? be born? be black? meet you?”
― Danez Smith, Don't Call Us Dead

“i want to say something without saying it
but there’s no time. i’m waiting for a few folks

i love dearly to die so i can be myself.
please don’t make me say who.”
― Danez Smith, Homie

“prediction: the cop will walk free
prediction: the boy will still be dead”
― Danez Smith, Don't Call Us Dead

“i've left in search of a new God. i do not trust the God you have given us. my grandmother's hallelujah is only outdone by the fear she nurses every time the blood-fat summer swallows another child who used to sing in the choir. take you God back. though his songs are beautiful, his miracles are inconsistent.”
― Danez Smith, Don't Call Us Dead

“I know something that doesn't die can't be beautiful”
― Danez Smith, Homie

“what animorph did you want to be? i wanted to be the boy who turned into the bird limp in the dog’s wet mouth, holding me toward his human saying, i made this for you.”
― Danez Smith, Homie

“scooby doo was trying to tell us something when every time that monster mask got snatched off it was a greedy white dude.”
― Danez Smith, Homie

“i spent my life arguing how i mattered until it didn’t matter.”
― Danez Smith, Don't Call Us Dead: Poems

“little black boy on the bus with his toy dinosaur, his eyes wide & endless

his dreams possible, pulsing, & right there”
― Danez Smith, Don't Call Us Dead

“they murder us for the crime of their imaginations”
― Danez Smith, Homie

“The dog upstairs won't shut up, but I can't hate him, he's up there alone all day, making noise must be the only way he knows he's not a ghost.”
― Danez Smith

“history is what it is. it knows what it did. bad dog. bad blood. bad day to be a boy”
― Danez Smith, Don't Call Us Dead: Poems

“I invited him over and he stayed forever. I feed him all my bread, the old peppers turned to mush & fluorescent mold, the chicken thighs unthawed & boneless. He ask for more so I give him my left leg. He ask for more & I give him my lungs & lips. More still, and there goes my bladder. He eats it all, all of me, eats the whole damn house, & I live forever in him or maybe it's the other way around. I swallowed. I swallowed him whole & didn't even notice him thrashing inside me.”
― Danez Smith

“I miss them. all the dead. how young. how silly/ to miss what you will become. I apologize.”
― Danez Smith, Homie

“i'm learning to become all the space i need. i laughed today.

for a second i was unhaunted. i was the sun, not light from some dead star. i was before. i was negative. but i'm not.

i am a house swollen with the dead, but still a home.”
― Danez Smith

“the b in debt is a silent black trapped”
― Danez Smith, Homie

“Do you know what it means to be that beautiful & still hunted & still alive?
Who knows this story but the elephants & the trees?

Who says the grace of a black man in motion is not perfect
as a tusk in the sun or a single leaf taking its sweet time to the ground?”
― Danez Smith, [insert] boy

“it doesn't feel good to know/ your need outweighed your fear.”
― Danez Smith, Homie

“they've made you a boy
i don't know

replaced my friend
with a hashtag.”
― Danez Smith, Don't Call Us Dead

“what advice do the drowned have for the burned? what gossip is there between the hanged & the buried?”
― Danez Smith, Homie

“i spent my life arguing how i mattered until it didn’t matter. who knew my haven would be my coffin? dead is the safest i’ve ever been. i’ve never been so alive.”
― Danez Smith, Don't Call Us Dead: Poems

“how often have i loved a thing because you loved it? including me”
― Danez Smith, Homie

“they know time. is not a river. not quite. like a lover. but a thing that leaves you. until it's gone.”
― Danez Smith, Homie

“I’m Going Back to Minnesota Where Sadness Makes Sense"

O California, don’t you know the sun is only a god
if you learn to starve for him? I’m bored with the ocean

I stood at the lip of it, dressed in down, praying for snow
I know, I’m strange, too much light makes me nervous

at least in this land where the trees always bear green.
I know something that doesn’t die can’t be beautiful.

Have you ever stood on a frozen lake, California?
The sun above you, the snow & stalled sea—a field of mirror

all demanding to be the sun too, everything around you
is light & it’s gorgeous & if you stay too long it will kill you

& it’s so sad, you know? You’re the only warm thing for miles
& the only thing that can’t shine.

Michigan Quarterly Review, Volume 54, Issue 3, Summer 2015”
― Danez Smith