Quotes About African American Literature

#1. And that's the beginning of the primary conversation in African American literature, right there: the African descendant explaining to the European descendant about how white people's actions are affecting the lives of black people.* In

Mat Johnson

#2. Here I am an old man in a long nightgown making muffled noises at people who may be no worse than I am.

Learned Hand

#3. To stutter through it with you or even stop stuttering and say nothing, was so lucky and soft, better talk than mile-a-minute with anyone. After a few minutes we'd stop rattling, we'd adjust, we'd settle in, and the conversation would speed into the night.

Daniel Handler

#4. Well, my first languages are German and Spanish because I was brought up by a Spanish mother and a German father, so I always spoke both languages at home. I'm very thankful that I was brought up in a bilingual house.

Daniel Bruhl

#5. I wanted to hug them all. We belonged to each other somehow...But that sweet feeling hung on and I loved all of Harlem gently and didn't want to be Puerto Rican or anything else but my own rusty self.

Louise Meriwether

#6. Literature is indispensable to the world. The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way a person looks at reality, then you can change it.

James Baldwin

#7. I'm only 5 ft. 7 in. tall, and for modelling, that's small, so I wasn't getting signed, but I kept on pushing.

Charlotte McKinney

#8. I read mostly Irish, African, Japanese, South American, and African writers. You can count on Scandinavian literature for a certain kind of darkness, a modern mythic style.

Chris Abani

#9. The trick set me up. It's that simple.

Shadez

#10. I never felt so small, so humbled, by the vastness of the universe and the fragility of life.

Bill Clegg

#11. Honey, de white man is de ruler of everything as fur as Ah been able tuh find out. Maybe it's some place way off in de ocean where de black man is in power, but we don't know nothin' but what we see.

Zora Neale Hurston

#12. You can handcuff my wrists, and Shackle my feet. You can bind me in chains, throw me in your deepest darkest dungeon...but you can't enslave my thinking...for it is free like the wind.

Jaye Swift

#13. So she sat on the porch and watched the moon rise. Soon its amber fluid was drenching the earth, and quenching the thirst of the day.

Zora Neale Hurston

#14. He Said...

Your garden at dusk
Is the soul of love
Blurred in its beauty
And softly caressing;
I, gently daring
This sweetest confessing,
Say your garden at dusk
Is your soul, My Love.

Anne Spencer

#15. They speak like melted butter and their children speak like footsteps on pavement ...

Isabel Wilkerson

#16. Like any good tree that one would hope to grow, we must set our roots deep into the ground so that what is real will prosper in the Light of Love.

Billy Corgan

#17. This book is dedicated to every woman who has ever felt self-conscious about her size. Outer beauty comes in all sizes, shapes, heights, ages, and colors. And inner beauty will always shine through, no matter what the packaging.

Raynetta Manees

#18. Tobacco exports should be expanded aggressively because Americans are smoking less.

Dan Quayle

#19. There is no achievement gap at birth.

Lisa Delpit

#20. Big Ma didn't need to say any more and she didn't. T.J. was far from her favorite person and it was quite obvious that Stacey and I owed our good fortune entirely to T.J.'s obnoxious personality.

Mildred D. Taylor

#21. At Harvard I was taking an African-American studies class, and we were reading about the tragic mulatto. Invariably, the tragic mulatto can't fit in either world and flings herself off a bridge. So I'm reading, and I'm like, 'Oh, my God, I think I'm in literature,' but my life was never like that.

Soledad O'Brien

#22. I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers.

Ralph Ellison

#23. like many families, everyone wandered around like children in a funhouse - they could hardly see one another around the corners, and what they could see was completely distorted.

James Hannaham

#24. Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.

Toni Morrison

#25. Call them from their houses, and teach them to dream.

Jean Toomer

#26. Black children need to see their lives reflected in the books they read. If they don't, they won't feel welcome in the world of literature. The lives of African-Americans are rich and diverse, and the books our children read should reflect that.

Valerie Wilson Wesley

#27. It was hard to love a woman that always made you feel so wishful.

Zora Neale Hurston

#28. He was a glance from God.

Zora Neale Hurston

#29. Maya Angelou, the famous African American poet, historian, and civil rights activist who is hailed be many as one of the great voices of contemporary literature, believes a struggle only makes a person stronger.

Michael N. Castle