173 Quotes by Claudia Rankine

  • Author Claudia Rankine
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    You can’t put the past behind you. It’s buried in you; it’s turned your flesh into its own cupboard. Not everything remembered is useful but it all comes from the world to be stored in you.

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  • Author Claudia Rankine
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    Intimacy is important in my work because I don't understand existence without intimacy. All of us are dependent on other people - and in ways we don't know. You cross the street and assume that person isn't crazy, they don't want to mow me down with their car. I don't know that person but I am already in a relationship with them. I am asking them to abide by the traffic laws. If they decided not to, I'd be dead. Even in those anonymous ways, we're in relationships.

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  • Author Claudia Rankine
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    The world is wrong. You can't put the past behind you. It's buried in you; it's turned your flesh into its own cupboard. Not everything remembered is useful but it all comes from the world to be stored in you. Who did what to whom on which day? Who said that? She said what? What did he just do? Did she really say that? He said what? What did she do? Did I hear what I think I heard? Did that just come out of my mouth, his mouth, your mouth? Do you remember when you sighed?

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  • Author Claudia Rankine
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    If you admit to being racist, it says you acknowledge that you are being driven by projections and stereotypes that were formed in the creation of our country. Racism is deeply rooted in America.

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  • Author Claudia Rankine
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    I think the idea that the systemic problems in a society lead to illness is important to know. We shouldn't be separating out how we live with where we live, and what ails us with the environment we're in.

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  • Author Claudia Rankine
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    I always took note of them, because I think if you're in the black or brown body, you're negotiating them all the time. It's like women taking note of sexism. It's a kind of incoherency that you are constantly negotiating.

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