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“My education and that of my Black associates were quite different from the education of our white schoolmates. In the classroom we all learned past participles, but in the streets and in our homes the Blacks learned to drop s’s from plurals and suffixes from past-tense verbs. We were alert to the gap separating the written word from the colloquial. We learned to slide out of one language and into another without being conscious of the effort. At school, in a given situation, we might respond with “That’s not unusual.” But in the street, meeting the same situation, we easily said, “It be’s like that sometimes.”
― I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
― I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
“No matter what I suffered in my pursuit of freedom, I always took strength from the fact that I was fighting with and for my own people. Bram was a free man who fought against his own people to ensure the freedom of others”
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“We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything—what a waste!”
― Call Me by Your Name
― Call Me by Your Name
“The needs of a society determine its ethics, and in the Black American ghettos the hero is that man who is offered only the crumbs from his country's table but by ingenuity and courage is able to take for himself a Lucullan feast. Hence the janitor who lives in one room but sports a robin's-egg-blue Cadillac is not laughed at but admired, and the domestic who buys forty-dollar shoes is not criticized but is appreciated. We know that they have put to use their full mental and physical powers. Each single gain feeds into the gains of the body collective.”
― I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
― I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
“I may have come close, but I never had what you had. Something always held me back or stood in the way. How you live your life is your business. But remember, our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once. Most of us can't help but live as though we've got two lives to live, one is the mockup, the other the finished version, and then there are all those versions in between. But there's only one, and before you know it, your heart is worn out, and, as for your body, there comes a point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it. Right now there's sorrow. I don't envy the pain. But I envy you the pain.”
― Call Me by Your Name
― Call Me by Your Name
Nicole’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Nicole’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
119 books
|
4 friends
1,255 books
|
83 friends
372 books
|
19 friends
849 books
|
61 friends
386 books
|
131 friends
487 books
|
149 friends
351 books
|
134 friends
68 books
|
8 friends
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Art, Biography, Business, Children's, Classics, Comics, Contemporary, Cookbooks, Crime, Fantasy, Fiction, Graphic novels, Historical fiction, History, Horror, Humor and Comedy, Memoir, Music, Mystery, Non-fiction, Philosophy, Poetry, Psychology, Religion, Romance, Science, Science fiction, Self help, Suspense, Spirituality, Sports, Thriller, and Travel
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