618 Quotes by Ta-Nehisi Coates

then I walked up that back staircase of awful secrets into that house of bondage. And as I mounted each step, I felt the terrible logic of the Task, my Task, snap into place. ... It was also that my own natural wants must forever be bottled up, that I must live in fear of those wants, so that more than I must live in fear of the Quality, I must necessarily live in fear of myself.

It is important that I tell you their names, that you know that I have never achieved anything alone.

You are growing into consciousness, and my wish for you is that you feel no need to constrict yourself to make other people comfortable.

I would not have you descend into your own dream. I would have you be a conscious citizen of this terrible and beautiful world.

[Art] must reflect the world in all its brutality and beauty, not in hopes of changing it but in the mean and selfish desire to not be enrolled in its lie, to not be coopted by the television dreams, to not ignore the great crimes all around us.

For memory is the chariot, and memory is the way, and memory is the bridge from the curse of slavery to the boon of freedom.

As you will soon see, finding freedom is only the first part. Living free is a whole other.

Won't reparations divide us? Not any more than we are already divided. The wealth gap merely puts a number on something we feel but cannot say - that American propserity was ill-gotten and selective in its distribution. What is needed is an airing of family secrets, a settling with old ghosts. What is needed is a healing of the American psyche and the banishment of white guilt.

The spirit and soul are the body and brain, which are destructible-that is precisely why they are so precious.