Lisha > Lisha's Quotes

“Concerning non-violence: it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.”
― Malcolm X, Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements

“Read absolutely everything you get your hands on because you'll never know where you'll get an idea from...”
― Malcolm X, Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements

“You can cuss out colonialism, imperialism, and all other kinds of ism, but it's hard for you to cuss that dollarism. When they drop those dollars on you, your soul goes.”
― Malcolm X, Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements

“Who are the Big Eye? Are they a secret part of the American government or a powerful private corporation? Is there a difference?”
― Nnedi Okorafor, The Book of Phoenix

“I knew I could always return to my books. Not escape, return. I knew so much, but so little. You can have knowledge, but you are nothing without wisdom.”
― Nnedi Okorafor, The Book of Phoenix

“Books make people quiet, yet they are so loud.”
― Nnedi Okorafor, The Book of Phoenix

“Human beings make terrible gods.”
― Nnedi Okorafor, The Book of Phoenix

“I love books . I adore everything about them. I love the feel of the pages on my fingertips. They are light enough to carry, yet so heavy with worlds and ideas . I love the sound of the pages flicking against my fingers. Print against fingerprints. Books make people quiet, yet they are so loud”
― Nnedi Okorafor, The Book of Phoenix

“To be something abnormal meant that you were to serve the normal. And if you refused, they hated you... and often the normal hated you even when you did serve them.”
― Nnedi Okorafor, Who Fears Death

“I was young but I hated like a middle-aged man at the end of his prime.”
― Nnedi Okorafor, Who Fears Death

“I was a trapped animal. Not trapped by the women, the house, or tradition. I was trapped by life. Like I had been a free spirit for millennia and then one day something snatched me up, something violent and angry and vengeful, and I was pulled into the body that I now resided in.”
― Nnedi Okorafor, Who Fears Death

“Because who you are is supposed to be the easiest question in the world answer, right?”
― Jennifer Brown, Hate List

“I'd spend about an hour, my room darkening around me, wondering what the hell happened to make me so unsure of who I even was. Because who you are is supposed to be the easiest question in the world to answer, right? Only for me it hadn't been easy for a very long time.”
― Jennifer Brown, Hate List

“Ce ne sont pas des mensonges, c'est de la politique.”
― Scholastique Mukasonga, Our Lady of the Nile

“Le Rwanda c'est le pays de la Mort. Tu te souviens de ce qu'on nous raconter au catéchisme : toute la journée, Dieu parcourt le monde mais, chaque soir, il rentre chez lui au Rwanda. Eh bien, pendant que Dieu voyageait, la Mort lui a pris sa place, quand il est revenu, elle lui a claqué la porte au nez. La Mort a établi son règne sur notre pauvre Rwanda. Elle a son projet : elle est décidée à l'accomplir jusqu'au bout. Je reviendrai quand le soleil de la vie brillera à nouveau sur notre Rwanda.”
― Scholastique Mukasonga, Our Lady of the Nile

“Lorsque tu veux savoir si tu es dans un endroit riche ou pauvre, tu regardes les poubelles. Si tu vois ni ordures ni poubelles, c'est très riche. Si tu vois des poubelles et pas d'ordures, c'est riche. Si tu vois des ordures à côté des poubelles, c'est ni riche ni pauvre: c'est touristique. Si tu vois les ordures sans les poubelles, c'est pauvre. Et si les gens habitent dans les ordures, c'est très très pauvre.”
― Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt, Monsieur Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Qur'an

“Enfin, le soufisme n'était pas une maladie, ce qui m'a déjà rassuré un peu, c'était une façon de penser -même s'il y a des façons de penser qui sont aussi des maladies, disait souvent monsieur Ibrahim.”
― Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt, Monsieur Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Qur'an

“Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“There is a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up, holding, holding on, this motion, unlike a ship's, smooths and contains the rocker. It's an inside kind--wrapped tight like skin. Then there is the loneliness that roams. No rocking can hold it down. It is alive. On its own. A dry and spreading thing that makes the sound of one's own feet going seem to come from a far-off place.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“He licked his lips. ‘Well, if you want my opinion-‘
‘I don’t, ‘ She said. ‘I have my own.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“Was it hard? I hope she didn't die hard.'

Sethe shook her head. 'Soft as cream. Being alive was the hard part.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“You looking good."
"Devil's confusion. He lets me look good long as I feel bad.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“Whitepeople believed that whatever the manners, under every dark skin was a jungle. Swift unnavigable waters, swinging screaming baboons, sleeping snakes, red gums ready for their sweet white blood. In a way, he thought, they were right. The more coloredpeople spent their strength trying to convince them how gentle they were, how clever and loving, how human, the more they used themselves up to persuade whites of something Negroes believed could not be questioned, the deeper and more tangled the jungle grew inside. But it wasn’t the jungle blacks brought with them to this place from the other (livable) place. It was the jungle whitefolks planted in them. And it grew. It spread. In, through and after life, it spread, until it invaded the whites who had made it. Touched them every one. Changed and altered them. Made them bloody, silly, worse than even they wanted to be, so scared were they of the jungle they had made. The screaming baboon lived under their own white skin; the red gums were their own.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“Clever, but schoolteacher beat him anyway to show him that definitions belonged to the definers - not the defined.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“To look around the United States today is enough to make prophets and angels weep.
This is not the land of the free;
it is only sporadically the home of the brave.”
― James Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro

“The root of the black man's hatred is rage,
and he does not so much had the white man
as simply as want the out of his way,
and, more than that,
out of his children's way.

The root of the white man's hatred is terror,
a bottomless and nameless terror,
which focuses on this dread figure,
an entity which lives only in his mind.”
― James Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro

“You never had to look at me. I had to look at you. I know more about you than you know about me. Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
― James Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro

“What white people have to do is try and find out in their own hearts why it is necessary to have a 'nigger' in the first place, because I'm not a nigger. I'm a man. But if you think I'm a nigger, it means you need it.”
― James Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro

“Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm