Black Life Quotes

“It is quite possible to say that the price a Negro pays for becoming articulate is to find himself, at length, with nothing to be articulate about. ("You taught me language," says Caliban to Prospero, "and my profit on't is I know how to curse.")”
― James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son

“The lotus flower lived in the figurative basement of the pond floor, yet it still blossomed with beauty and with no traces of the muck that it came from.”
― Lana Reid, Basements & Blossoms: A Few Recollections of the Ugliness That Made My Life Beautiful