60 Quotes by Yaa Gyasi

I know that psychology and neuroscience have to work in concert if we want to address the full range of human behavior, and I really do love the idea of the whole animal, but I guess my question is that if the brain can't account for things like reason and emotion, then what can? If the brain makes it possible for 'us' to feel and think, then what is 'us'? Do you believe in souls? I was breathless.

Maybe he wouldn't end up the kind of man who needed to use his body for work. Maybe he'd be a new kind of black man altogether, one who got to use his mind.

he knew in his body, even if he hadn’t yet put it together in his mind, that in America the worst thing you could be was a black man. Worse than dead, you were a dead man walking.

Evil is like a shadow. It follows you.

Of course, my mother is her own person. Of course, she contains multitudes. She reacts in ways that surprise me, in part, simply because she isn't me. I forget this and relearn it anew because it's a lesson that doesn't, that can't, stick. I know her only as she is defined against me, so when I see her as herself, like when she gets catcalled on the street, there's dissonance…

Og hvis han hamrede bogen ned i bordet, ville alle i rummet glo, og de ville ikke se andet end hans hudfarve og hans vrede, og så ville de tro, de vidste noget om ham, og det ville være det samme noget, som havde legitimeret at smide hans oldefar H i fængsel, men det ville også være anderledes, mindre åbenlyst, end det engang var.

There's a castle on the coast of Fanteland called the Cape Coast Castle. That is where they used to keep the slaves before they sent them away, to Aburokyire: America, Jamaica. Asante traders would bring in their captives. Fante, Ewa, or Ga middlemen would hold them, then sell them to the British or Dutch or whoever was paying the most at the time. Everyone was responsible. We all were... we all are.

Since moving to the Castle, she'd discovered that only the white men talked of "black magic." As though magic had a color.

Asante traders would bring in their captives. Fante, Ewe, or Ga middlemen would hold them, then sell them to the British or the Dutch or whoever was paying the most at the time. Everyone was responsible. We all were... we all are.