Jason Reynolds Quotes

But if the blood inside you is on the inside of someone else, you never want to see it on the outside of them.

So I couldn't help but worry, even when I felt like he didn't deserve my worry anymore.

And I'll never go asleep again believing that touching them or anything of his will lead to an arm around my neck.

But it feels like an arm around my neck, wrenching, just thinking about how I'll never go to sleep again believing him or believing he will eventually come home, because he won't, and now I guess I should love him more, like he's my favorite, which is hard to do because he was my only brother, and already my favorite.

The most addictive drug known to America. Racism. It causes wealth, an inflated sense of self, and hallucinations.

What is it about adults that makes them all just say the same things? Like they all studied the same book about grown-up-ness, memorizing phrases like, *Does it make it right?* and *Be the bigger person*" -Ghost

A BROKEN HEART

killed my dad. That's why my mother always said. And as a kid I always figured his heart was forreal broken like an arm or a toy or the middle drawer.

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.

When it comes to
my dream,
the way I like to describe it
is that
it's a rabid beast
that found me when I
was young

It's so weird how a person can be a normal part of your everyday life, and then just disappear. And when they do, you realize that some of those everyday things go with them. Like the smell of food cooking.

Not like KKK racist," she said. "I don't think most people think they're racist. But every time something like this happens, you could, like you said, say, 'Not my problem.' You could say, 'It's a one-time thing.' Every time it happened.

Because racism was alive and real as shit. It was everywhere and all mixed up in everything, and the only people who said it wasn't, and the only people who said, "Don't talk about it" were white. Well, stop lying. That's what I wanted to tell those people. Stop lying. Stop denying. That's why I was marching. Nothing was going to change unless we did something about it. We! White people!

At sixteen
I though
Iwould've made it
by now.

Now
I'm making up
what making it
means
as i go.

But do protests even work? I asked. I mean, I was all for the idea. I really was. But the only time I had ever heard about any protests actually working was Dr. King's. Thats it. Ain't never heard of no other ones making a difference.

Berry stepped in. "They're a piece to the puzzle. I mean there are a lot of pieces, like reforming laws and things like that. But protests are what sends the message to the folks in power that something needs to change. That people are fed up, she explained. "We have a right to voice how we feel, and isn't that better than just doing nothing.

I felt good. I felt like, somehow, we were all winning.

IS IT POSSIBLE

for a huge to peel back skin of time, the toughened and raw bits, the irritated and irritating dry spots, the parts that bleed?

Another thing about the rules

They weren't meant to be broken.
They were meant for the broken

to follow"
-Will

History can only teach its lesson if it is remembered.

Had our hearts really become so numb that we needed dead bodies in order to feel the beat of compassion in our chests? Who am I if I need to be shocked back into my best self?

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

...nobody owes you anything, so when you get something, be appreciative.

Best to become invisible
in times like these.
Everybody knows that.

You love first, and that's always a good thing.

Weird talking to my dad like he was a stranger even though we hugged like family.

Mr. Ray had no problems opening the door, but he just couldn't close it, as my dad would say.

People always love people more when they are dead.

Maybe you are a dancer
moving to the sound of your own future;
or a musician
banging strumming bowing plucking
blowing into,
creating soundtracks
for dream trains chugging along
through thick night;
or a painter
spilling and splattering confessions
across the face of stretched canvas;
or an actor
praying at the altar
of your alter ego;
or a photographer,
finger on the button
like a quick-draw cowboy,
shooting
not to kill anyone
but to preserve forever;
or maybe even
a writer
for some strange reason,
writing expert books,
pages of good intention
and rah-rah and fantasy
and sometimes truth,
or maybe even letters to people
you don't know but
do know you love.

PEOPLE ALWAYS SAID

he was taught to do good
but doing bad
was in his blood.

And there's that nighttime
Mom always be talking about.

It'll snatch your teaching
from you,

put a gun in your hand,
a grumble in your gut,
and some sharp in your teeth.

Pretended like yellow tape
was some kind of
neighborhood flag
that don't nobody wave
but always be flapping
in the wind.

I ain't got enough mad for both of y'all, so since you my responsibility, I'm gonna save all the mad for you.

I was marching. I kept saying it as I scanned the crowd for Jill, pumping myself up, because some people had told me racism was a thing of the past, they's told me not to get involved. But that was nuts. They were nuts. And more to the point - they'd all been white people. Well, guess what? I'm white too - and that's exactly why I was marching. I had to. Because racism was alive and real as shit. It was everywhere and all mixed up in everything, and the only people who said it wasn't, and the only people who said "Don't talk about it" were white. Well, stop lying. That's what I wanted to tell those people. Stop lying. Stop denying. That's why I was marching. Nothing was going to change unless we did something about it. We! White people! We had to stand up and say something about it too, because otherwise it was just like what one of those posters in the crowd outside school said:
OUR SILENCE IS ANOTHER KIND OF VIOLENCE

...our job sometimes is to divorce ourselves from the fact that I've got to constantly be gifting young people with tools and equip them with - I'm imparting lessons upon them. Sometimes it about, look you hate reading, my job is to figure out how to help you not hate reading. The rest of it we can get to, but I got to figure out how to get you engaged. In order to do that sometimes you got to pull back. Right. You got to put a little grease in the pot. Right. So if that means you've got to have them reading rap lyrics in your class, then that's what it is. If that means you got to have them reading comic books or the athletes reading Sports Illustrated and the sports section in ESPN Magazine, then that's what it is. Our job is not just - it's not to just promote literature, which is what we all do. Our job is to promote literacy and there's a difference. Right. There's a difference. Literacy is what will help them way more than what literature will do.

What it was like to love something enough to do anything to come back to it.

I wanted him to know that I saw him, a guy who, even with a tear-streaked face, seemed to have two tiny smiles framing his eyes like parentheses, a guy on the ground pantomiming his death to remind the world he was alive.

Sometimes, when people get treated as less than human, the best way to help them feel better is to simply treat them as human. Not as victims. Just you as you. Rashad Butler, before all this.

It had been a few days since everything went down, and when you're used to hanging out with a person every single day, a few days off can sometimes seem more like a few months.

Because if it did- if it disappeared, if the voices vanished and you were no longer overtaken by the taunts of your own potential, no longer blinded by a perfect vision of your purpose, no longer engorged with passion- what would happen?

Your dream is the mole
behind your ear,
that chip in your
front tooth,
your freckles.
It's the thing that makes
you special,
but not the thing that makes
you great.
The courage in trying,
the passion in living,
and the acknowledgement
and appreciation of
the beauty happening around
you does that.

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

Shawn turned back toward me, eyes dull from death but shining from tears, finally spoke to me. Just two words, like a joke he'd been saving. YOU COMING?

You, my dear, should spend more time in a library. It's not just a hiding place, but also the place where the chases happen.

The discomfort seemed to lower the ceiling...

The stupidest name for a sport is football. Why isn't it called tackleball? Real football is soccer. Soccer is the second-stupidest name for a sport, unless it was the name for female boxing. But female boxing is already called boxing, even though boxing should be the sport to see who can pack up stuff, like clothes, the fastest. Why isn't that a sport? If it was a sport, Ma would be a world-champion boxer.

How do you small-talk your father when "dad" is a language so foreign that whenever you try to say it, it feels like you got a third lip and a second tongue?

Buck laughed, and

laughter,

when it's loud
and heavy
and aimed
at you,

I think
can feel just
as bad as
a bullet's

bang."
-Will

If people aren't careful, they can be tricked into believing a big deal, is a done deal. Like there's no more fight left. No reason to keep pushing. That freedom is an actual destination.

...and even though he said we were telling secrets that we were all going to keep, I had learned a long time ago that adults played by different rules.

AND EVEN THOUGH

his face was wet with tears he wasn't supposed to cry when he was alive, I couldn't see him as anything less than my brother, my favorite, my only.

ANAGRAM

is when you take a word and rearrange the letters to make another word. And sometimes the words are still somehow connected ex: CANOE = OCEAN. Same letters, different words, somehow still make sense together, like brothers.

One thing I am now certain of
is that this road less traveled has
in fact
been traveled by far more suckers
than you think.

All of us out here,
slumped over wearing
weird fake
broken smiles,
trying to avoid the truth:
That we all have road rage.

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.

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

DANI WAS DISAPPOINTED.

Slapped her hands to her face, tried to wipe away worry. But she couldn't. And I couldn't expect her to.

The truth is,
finding that beast may
or may not happen.
But the treasures I've discovered
under the heavy stones
and behind the massive trees
and deep in the dark caves
have created the hunter
and the human
that I am.

I should probably introduce myself. My name is Patina Jones. And I ain't no junk. I also ain't no hair flipper. And most of the girls at Chester Academy are hair flippers who be looking at me like my mom some kind of junk maker.

We needed to talk, plain and simple. And seeing as through she was texting me, she clearly was opening the door. I just had to be man enough to walk through it.