Renata > Renata's Quotes

“The Trump years amazed a certain kind of white person; they had no reference for national vulgarity, for such broad corruption and venality, until it was too late. The least reflective of them say, “This is not America.” But some of them suspect that it is America, and there is great pain in understanding that, without your consent, you are complicit in a great crime, in learning that the whole game was rigged in your favor, that there are nations within your nation who have spent all of their collective lives in the Trump years. The pain is in the discovery of your own illegitimacy—that whiteness is power and nothing else. I could hear that same pain in Avner’s and Guy’s words. They were raised under the story that the Jewish people were the ultimate victims of history. But they had been confronted with an incredible truth—that there was no ultimate victim, that victims and victimizers were ever flowing.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message

“My art is not about success. My art is about me—my life, my experiences, my perspective. That is my cheat code. I remind myself that I am one of a kind. I am special. I have something to say. And even if no one cares, I do. The only way I could be an imposter is if I’m not true to myself.”
― Ziwe Fumudoh, Black Friend: Essays

“I do not exist just to move plot. While I am a supportive friend, I am not a supporting character. I am the protagonist of my perfectly imperfect story.”
― Ziwe Fumudoh, Black Friend: Funny, incisive essays on navigating Blackness, tokenism, and friendship in predominantly white spaces.

“We are wiser to the fact that having a black friend is not a defense against accusations of racism, just like having a black child does not absolve Thomas Jefferson from being a fugly hater.”
― Ziwe Fumudoh, Black Friend: Essays

“You see, the hate they give is senseless. They already got power. Yet they hate those over who they got control, who don’t really pose a threat to them. Their fears aren’t real—just insecurities and inadequacies. Deep down they know that. Makes their hate like … watered-down whiskey. Now your people!”
― P. Djèlí Clark, Ring Shout

“Reason and law don’t mean much when white folk want their way.”
― P. Djèlí Clark, Ring Shout

“Folks like to talk about revenge like it’s a righteous thing but it’s just hate in a nicer suit,”
― S.A. Cosby, Razorblade Tears

“Tears ran from his eyes and stung his cheeks. Tears for his son. Tears for his wife. Tears for the little girl they had to raise. Tears for who they were and what they all had lost. Each drop felt like it was slicing his face open like a razorblade.”
― S.A. Cosby, Razorblade Tears

“When the people you love are gone, it's the things they've touched that keep them alive in your mind”
― S.A. Cosby, Razorblade Tears

“Well, ruthless. Stealing people’s lives from ’em and making ’em work to make ’em money. The old folks back on the island used to say that’s why they were white; they lost all their color when they lost their souls. You gotta be a certain type of soulless to believe you can own somebody the way they do.”
― Erin Crosby Eckstine, Junie

“I just think you deserve more than a pretty view, Delilah June. You deserve to take all the beauty of this world and hold it in your hands. You deserve to bite it like a peach and let the juice drip ’til your fingers get sticky.”
― Erin Crosby Eckstine, Junie

“Your husband is not going to take care of you the way you think,” Phoebe says. “Nobody can take care of you the way you need to take care of yourself. It’s your job to take care of yourself like that.”
― Alison Espach, The Wedding People

“She doesn’t see the point in staying alive only to do all the same things that made her want to die.”
― Alison Espach, The Wedding People

“Some of life's lessons will only be purchased with pain and blood.”
― Addie E. Citchens, Dominion

“So I feared not just the violence of this world but the rules designed to protect you from it, the rules that would have you contort your body to address the block, and contort again to be taken seriously by colleagues, and contort again so as not to give the police a reason. All my life I’d heard people tell their black boys and black girls to “be twice as good,” which is to say “accept half as much.” These words would be spoken with a veneer of religious nobility, as though they evidenced some unspoken quality, some undetected courage, when in fact all they evidenced was the gun to our head and the hand in our pocket. This is how we lose our softness. This is how they steal our right to smile.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

“Life is beautiful and life is ugly and we have to learn
To live with both sides of the same coin
and see the light in the darkness.
The world is Beautiful ugly,
relationships are Beautiful ugly,
and life is Beautiful ugly.”
― Alice Feeney, Beautiful Ugly

“I keep my thoughts to myself because silence cannot be misquoted.”
― Alice feeney, Beautiful Ugly

“Fear can make something beautiful appear ugly.”
― Alice Feeney, Beautiful Ugly

“Grief is a patient thief and steals far more than people who have never known it realize.”
― Alice Feeney, Beautiful Ugly

“Sadness can consume a person if it is allowed to linger too long. It takes root and buries itself inside a person's soul, until every thought is too heavy, too painful to think.”
― Alice Feeney, Beautiful Ugly

“Grief is like a fingerprint, different every time.”
― Alice Feeney, Beautiful Ugly

“In the dark, you could never be too black. In the dark, everyone was the same color.”
― Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half