618 Quotes by Ta-Nehisi Coates

I think of your grandmother calling me and noting how you were growing tall and would one day try to “test me.” And I said to her that I would regard that day, should it come, as the total failure of fatherhood because if all I had over you were my hands, then I really had nothing at all.

I am wounded. I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.

I wanted to pursue things, to know things, but I could not match the means of knowing that came naturally to me with the expectations of professors. The pursuit of knowing was freedom to me, the right to declare your own curiosities and follow them through all manner of books. I was made for the library, not the classroom. The classroom was a jail of other people's interests. The library was open, unending, free. Slowly, I was discovering myself.

Anyone can make a baby, but it takes a man to be a father.

My parents were two-faced. To me, they showed no mercy. They preached from theBook of Fallen Children - Commandment 1: The Child Is Always Ungrateful. At eighteen, the free ride would stop, and I'd be dumped into the mess of the world. But in their private moments, they were soft, cowed by love. They critiqued their own parenting skills and thought of all the ways the could help their kids get ahead.

I thank my mother (Ma, you're only second cause you got the dedication), who used to make me write essays whenever I got into trouble, explaining exactly what I'd done and why I'd done it.

My work is to give you what I know of my own particular path while allowing you to walk your own.

I didnt always have things, but I had people. I had a mother and a father who I would match against any other. [...] I had friends who would leap in front of a bus for me. You need to know that I was loved, that whatever my lack of religious feeling, I have always loved my people and that broad love is directly related to the specific love I feel for you.

Part of me thinks that your very vulnerability brings you closer to the meaning of life, just as for others, the quest to believe oneself white divides them from it.