14 Quotes by Patricia Williams

When most folks think about the problems of growing up in the hood, they think about what it must feel like to be poor, or hungry, or to have your lights cut off. The struggle nobody talk about is what it feel like to be invisible, or to know in your heart the nobody cares. Mama didn’t want to be famous, she wanted to be seen.

It is a challenge in general to change an image, especially the image of an entire product category.

I think there is a development piece missing, that just looking at the architecture and construction piece is not going to solve. I support mass transit, but it can't have a lot of collateral damage to everything around it.

I said if it doesn't work out, I can always give it back.

What am I going to do? I came back to a nightmare.

I'm not surprised he is where he is.

I called my wife and said, 'I took the cross country job,'

I could tell she was in the car. But she never showed up, and it was unlike her not to call back. She always called, pretty much every half-hour.

There is a myth in this country that the way out of poverty is to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” that by sheer force of will one can change the course of one’s life, no matter how great the obstacles. But in all my years reporting, I’ve never once spoken to someone who came from abject poverty and transcended that path without help.