Bryan McNeal > Bryan's Quotes

“I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Beneatha: Love him? There is nothing left to love.

Mama: There is always something left to love. And if you ain't learned that, you ain't learned nothing. (Looking at her) Have you cried for that boy today? I don't mean for yourself and for the family 'cause we lost the money. I mean for him: what he been through and what it done to him. Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most? When they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain't through learning - because that ain't the time at all. It's when he's at his lowest and can't believe in hisself 'cause the world done whipped him so! when you starts measuring somebody, measure him right, child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is.”
― Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun

“Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most? When they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain't through learning-because that ain't the time at all...when you starts measuring somebody, measure him right, child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is.”
― Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun

“Seem like God didn't see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams -but He did give us children to make them dreams seem worth while.”
― Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun

“A status not freely chosen or entered into by an individual or a group is necessarily one of oppression and the oppressed are by their nature (i.e., oppressed) forever in ferment and agitation against their condition and what they understand to be their oppressors. If not by overt rebellion or revolution, then in the thousand and one ways they will devise with and without consciousness to alter their condition”
― Lorraine Hansberry

“Something always told me I wasn't no rich white woman.”
― Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun

“How we gets to the place where we scared to talk softness to each other.”
― Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun

“Depression is anger turned inward.”
― Sapphire, Push

“… but you cant get all hung up on details when you are trying to survive…”
― Sapphire

“Every blade of grass has its Angel that bends over it and whispers, "Grow, grow." - The Talmud”
― Sapphire, Push

“Is life a hammer to beat me down?”
― Sapphire, Push

“Love buries itself in me, up to the hilt.”
― James Merrill, Selected Poems of James Merrill

“The eggshell of appearance split.”
― James Merrill

“The Black homosexual is hard pressed to gain audience among his heterosexual brothers; even if he is more talented, he is inhibited by his silence or his admissions. This is what the race has depended on in being able to erase homosexuality from our recorded history. The "chosen" history. But the sacred constructions of silence are futile exercises in denial. We will not go away with our issues of sexuality. We are coming home. It is not enough to tell us that one was a brilliant poet, scientist, educator, or rebel. Whom did he love? It makes a difference. I can't become a whole man simply on what is fed to me: watered-down versions of Black life in America. I need the ass-splitting truth to be told, so I will have something pure to emulate, a reason to remain loyal.”
― Essex Hemphill, Ceremonies: Prose and Poetry