Alicia

“I am sure that you have had to deal with the occasional roughneck on the subway or in the park, but when I was about your age, each day, fully one-third of my brain was concerned with who I was walking to school with, our precise number, the manner of our walk, the number of times I smiled, who or what I smiled at, who offered a pound and who did not-- all of which is to say that I practiced the culture of the streets, a culture concerned chiefly with securing the body. I do not long for those days.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates

“I felt that I had crossed some threshold, out of the foyer of my life and into the living room. Everything that was the past seemed to be another life. There was before you, and then there was after, and in this after, you were the God I'd never had. I submitted before your needs, and I knew then that I must survive for something more than survival's sake. I must survive for you.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

“I might have been calm, but my dear father was near tears. 'Are you all right, jani?' he said. 'Aba,' I said, trying to reassure him. 'Everybody knows they will die someday. No one can stop death. It doesn't matter if it comes from a Talib or from cancer.”
― Malala Yousafzai, I Am Malala: How One Girl Stood Up for Education and Changed the World

“We meant well. We tried our best. "Good intention" is a hall pass through history, a sleeping pill that ensures the Dream.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me