137 Quotes by Jason Reynolds

But you know how death is. Your body goes but your ideas don’t. Your impact lingers on even when it’s poisonous. Some bodies get put into the ground and daisies bloom. Others encourage the sprouting of weeds. Weeds that work to strangle whatever’s living, and growing, around them.

If we understand how the tree works, how the trunk and roots are where the power lies, and how gravity is on our side, we can attack it, each of us with small axes, and change the face of the forest. So let’s learn all there is to know about the tree of racism. The root. The fruit. The sap and trunk. The nests built over time, the changing leaves. That way, your generation can finally, actively chop it down.

So this was about you saving somebody, huh? Yeah, well, let me ask you something, Super Hero... Who’s gonna save you?

Nobody says the words anymore, but somehow the violence still remains. If I didn’t want the violence to remain, I had to do a hell of a lot more than just say the right things and not say the wrong things.

I do believe we can do better, be better. But we can’t hide behind fear. We can’t tuck truth between the cushions of comfort. We have to deal with it, really confront it, so that our children can live with a lot less weight. We owe it to them.

If only is what’s circling in my mind every morning before I breathe in beauty and breathe out bad decisions; If only is the cool breeze before I spin the world apart.

Shawn’s dead. So strange to say. So sad. But I guess not surprising, which I guess is even stranger, and even sadder.

Like I was holding my breath. Maybe I was. Maybe I was hoping I could give some back to Shawn.

You can’t be out there saving the world when your neighborhood ain’t event straight.