Black Enough Quotes

Yes, being black is a full-time job: sometimes you are invisible, other times you are hyper-visible," he says. "Sometimes you are welcome, other times you are not. The thermostat is always moving and you have to keep adapting to find some comfort level. Richard Pryor used to talk about going to Africa and people there telling him he was white. Even though he was black, he just wasn't black enough. ~ Paul Beatty

It's really not enough to just have black women. A really good idea could be to comment on how they are treated by society. ~ Lea DeLaria

I come in with this rock 'n' roll-oriented music, and it's not black enough ... I've always had to deal with this black-white thing. ~ Lenny Kravitz

This Thursday, Barack Obama is gonna give his acceptance speech, and reportedly it's going to include performances by Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen. Yeah. And they say Obama's not black enough! ~ Conan O'Brien

Too hard for MTV, not black enough for BET, just let me be ... ~ Jadakiss

Because it is the hardness of the floor, and the abrupt halt in momentum, and the unyielding nature of the surface, that causes a thing to crack. Even if it is not that thing's fault. And then we talk about this thing being broken, or it needing to be fixed, and not what part of the floor has played in the matter. Never the part about the floor being a constant threat. Even if it is a nice floor. Even if everybody wants one just like it. ~ Tracey Baptiste

Because I want every kid to be viewed as a person rather than as a member of a certain race does not mean that I'm not black enough ... Do they want me to be positive just for black kids and negative for everybody else? ~ Michael Jordan

I dreamed of going to the most remote places on this earth to dig for old bones, older than people. Before humans and their stupid ideas. Before hate. Maybe even before love, too. Dinosaurs just existed. No lectures, no books, no language. No world-conquering Europeans and no defeated everybody else. Just those powerful, unrestrained creatures roaming the planet. ~ Ibi Zoboi

Every pastor I talk to says, and particularly if they're African American they'll say, "I'm not black enough for African Americans. I'm not white enough for the whites. I'm not Hispanic enough." ~ Michael Emerson

If you can leave two black stripes from the exit of one corner to the braking zone of the next, you have enough horsepower. ~ Mark Donohue

I was neither black enough for the black kids or Dominican enough for the Dominican kids. I didn't have a safe category. ~ Junot Diaz

I opened my eyes; how could I keep them shut when I could not sleep? The same darkness brooded over me; the same unfathomable black eternity which my thoughts strove against and could not understand. I made the most despairing efforts to find a word black enough to characterize this darkness; a word so horribly black that it would darken my lips if I named it. Lord! how dark it was! and I am carried back in thought to the sea and the dark monsters that lay in wait for me. They would draw me to them, and clutch me tightly and bear me away by land and sea, through dark realms that no soul has seen. I feel myself on board, drawn through waters, hovering in clouds, sinking
sinking. ~ Knut Hamsun

It's probably wrong to believe there can be any limit to the horror which the human mind can experience. On the contrary, it seems that some exponential effect begins to obtain as deeper and deeper darkness falls-as little as one may like to admit it, human experience tends, in a good many ways, to support the idea that when the nightmare grows black enough, horror spawns horror, one coincidental evil begets other, often more deliberate evils, until finally blackness seems to cover everything. And the most terrifying question of all may be just how much horror the human mind can stand and still maintain a wakeful, staring, unrelenting sanity. That such events have their own Rube Goldberg absurdity goes almost without saying. At some point, it all starts to become rather funny. That may be the point at which sanity begins either to save itself or to buckle and break down; that point at which one's sense of humor begins to reassert itself. ~ Stephen King

Has he paid his dues? Is he black enough? ... John Lewis and I were out there marching and organizing sit-ins back in the '60s so that his children and my children would not have to do it ... We would have been failures if had to do the same things we did. ~ Jim Clyburn

Being in a shadow is never just as simple as stepping out of it. Shadows can camouflage a lot of things. ~ Leah Henderson

Your grandma used to always tell me that just because something is over doesn't mean it wasn't successful. All things end at some point. ~ Justina Ireland

Light skin gives me such privileges that my complaints are not worthy. I'm not "positive" enough. Not "black" enough. I'm not a "real" black person. Worst of all are the terrible choices - the possibility of losing connections to those I love, betraying them, those who have done terrible things but at the same time have had to survive within the context of racism. Whose side am I on? ~ Toi Derricotte

Wherever I go, people ask: 'What is she? What is she?' There has always been an agenda - they're excluding me or including me in something with that question. It is the first thing agents in Los Angeles ask me. And then I'd hear: 'You're not black enough, you're too black, you're Italian - no, you're Spanish.' ~ Roma Maffia

What is blackness? Is it the way you talk? Do you got to say, 'Dey this, dey dat.' Or the way you dress? Or is it the forgiving of certain things? What is black enough? ~ Douglas Wilder

It's self-effacing, it's hard-luck, the shtetl stories. All those Coasters things are an amalgam of Yiddish and black humor. ~ Jerry Leiber

Burn shavings and splinters of pitch pine, and when they turn to charcoal, put them out, and pound them into mortar with size. This will make a pretty black for fresco painting. ~ Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

Even through my good-looking youth, I wasn't called on for any romantic parts, which is okay. What I was called on to do, I enjoyed doing. The funny thing about life is that if you live long enough, I think, you'll get every wish you ever had. It'll all come true. ~ Morgan Freeman

Literature exists because the world isn't enough. ~ Fernando Pessoa

I'm empty and lonely and lost and I'm starving, and there isn't enough in the whole wide world that could make me feel whole. ~ Amy Reed

It was difficult to find my way into 'I Am Abraham,' to feel confident enough to inhabit Lincoln's persona. I began with a prologue in a neutral voice, wrote of Lincoln at the White House with a sly young reporter quizzing him about his humble origins. ~ Jerome Charyn

Don't do this to me, Eliza. Please. I need you." I looked at Paul. He was crying. "You don't need me," I said, wondering whether or not I believed it. He gripped my face and kissed me. But it was a hard, painful kiss. A severe and bitter kiss. A kiss that seemed so black, so final, it was like death. "Happy fucking Birthday. ~ Tiffanie DeBartolo

The Deliverator's car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to
fire a pound of bacon into the Asteroid Belt. Unlike a bimbo box or a Burb
beater, the Deliverator's car unloads that power through gaping, gleaming,
polished sphincters. When the Deliverator puts the hammer down, shit happens.
You want to talk contact patches? Your car's tires have tiny contact patches,
talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. The Deliverator's
car has big sticky tires with contact patches the size of a fat lady's thighs.
The Deliverator is in touch with the road, starts like a bad day, stops on a
peseta.
Why is the Deliverator so equipped? Because people rely on him. He is a role
model. This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you
got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have
guns and no one can fucking stop them. As a result, this country has one of the
worst economies in the world. When it gets down to it -- talking trade balances
here -- once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once
things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in
Tadzhikistan and selling them here -- once our edge in natural resources has
been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North
Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel -- once the Invisible Hand ha ~ Neal Stephenson

The sky is deep black, the stars pressing down brilliantly all around, and I am reminded that we are not beneath the constellations, but among them.
p 127 ~ Michael Perry

When a figure materialized from out of nowhere right next to him, Qhuinn nearly pulled his trigger, but the blond and black head of hair was unmistakable. "Do you want to get shot?" Qhuinn demanded.
In a Darth Vader voice, the angel shot back, "Your weapons are nothing against me."
"For fuck's sake - "

-Qhuinn & Lassiter ~ J.R. Ward

Stupidity really gets me going, when it's just plain stupid, obvious stupidity. ~ Lewis Black

Life has immense analogy with stock market.
It is volatile, but if you stick on long enough, it has the potential to reward you with handsome returns in the long run. ~ Manoj Arora

I think if you are truly convinced of why you're writing something, if it's a strong enough dream of yours to share this vision and see it realized, you can almost always find a way motivate yourself, to keep going back to the drawing board and trying new things and approaches. ~ Diane Drake

Did you see a large robotic hand run by here just now?" I said, having caught enough of my breath to speak.
"Hmm?" he said, as if he were just realizing we were talking to him. "Ah. Yes, it just went inside."
"What?"
"Well, it walked up and looked around as if it wanted to go inside, so I let it inside. It had not strictly obeyed the dress code, but while the rules are both specific and comprehensive, I thought it made sense to allow an exception in the case of an autonomous hand. ~ Hank Green

The holiness of the church means that life, as well as truth, marks Christ's church; the behavior of Christians in the world must be remarkable enough to cause grudging admiration, astonished curiosity or threatening hostility. ~ Edmund Clowney

I used to wait for a sign, she said, before I did anything. Then one night I had a dream & an angel in black tights came to me & said, you can start any time now, & then I asked is this a sign? & the angel started laughing & I woke up. Now, I think the whole world is filled with signs, but if there's no laughter, I know they're not for me. ~ Brian Andreas

You never knew what shape your enemies would take." from the book -- Black Gold of the Sun ~ Ekow Eshun

Can it be That modesty may more betray our sense Than woman's lightness? Having waste ground enough, Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary And pitch our evils there? ~ William Shakespeare

If you're waiting until you feel talented enough to make it, you'll never make it. ~ Criss Jami

Simple formula for the actor: prove you're creative enough to get the job, sane enough to keep the job, and hungry enough to give up everything else to keep them happy. ~ Brooke Langton

In Washington, D.C., far from the Capitol dome, was an old redbrick office building with office space and apartments available for rent. On the fifth floor, at the end of a narrow hall with a noisy steam radiator, was a plain little office with its title painted in small black letters on the door: The Veritas Project. Just inside that door, Consuela, the secretary, sorted through conventional mail at her desk. Seated at a computer nearby, Carrie, the assistant, scanned through e-mails from all around the country. Between their two workstations was another door, and beyond that door was the cluttered office of Mr. Morgan, the boss. Mr. ~ Frank E. Peretti

A pretty face may be enough to catch a man, but it takes character and good nature to hold him. ~ Thomas More

Well, my epic freedom moment was short-lived, because I realized my cell phone was dead. I walked down the road to a gas station and asked if I could use the phone. I called Tracy and told her where I was and asked her to pick me up. When Tracy arrived I hopped in the car and the very first thing I said to her was "I gotta get home. I have to print out some TV guides and I need to write a letter to some of the guys in there." She started laughing and when she could compose herself enough to talk said, "My sisters and I all said we guarantee Noah is going to come out of jail with new friends. He's going to be friends with everybody."
I got home and immediately wrote a letter to Michael Bolton. I put my email address at the bottom. I printed out TV guides. I printed out crossword puzzles. I even printed a couple of pages of jokes and riddles and whatever would be fun to read and do and folded them up and put them in an envelope. All that was left to do was to write the address, put a stamp on the envelope, and put it in the mailbox. I put the envelope in the car in between the seat and the center console to take to the post office.
I must have been distracted or had to do something else because the envelope sat there for months. Every so often I would look at it and go, Oh crap, I haven't sent that yet. And then at some point I spilled something on it so I knew I would never send it now. I threw it out.
To this day I'm worried that one day I'm going to be at the ~ Noah Galloway

They are the key components of our civilization. I want to show that inside these political, economic, legal and social black boxes are highly complex sets of interlocking institutions. Like the circuit boards inside your computer or your smartphone, it is these institutions that make the gadget work. And if it stops working, it is probably because of a defect in the institutional wiring. You cannot understand what is wrong just by looking at the shiny casing. You need to look inside. ~ Niall Ferguson

Ty was pulling his headphones out of his pocket, bracing his black-sneakered feet just above the top step. 'We're Shadowhunters,' he said. 'We don't run. ~ Cassandra Clare

It makes Brooke feel strange in her stomach. It is like the feeling when she reads a book like the one about the man with the bomb, or thinks a sentence, just any old sentence like: the girl ran across the park, and unless you add the describing word then the man or the girl are definitely not black, they are white, even though no one has mentioned white, like when you take the the out of a headline and people just assume it's there anyway. Though if it were a sentence about Brooke herself you'd have to add the equivalent describing word and that's how you'd know. The black girl ran across the park. ~ Ali Smith

I'm never there enough to really keep up with what's going on in the Australian film industry. I just try and be part of it as much as I can. ~ Guy Pearce

I love you, too," she said.

He lifted his head, surprised. "Did I say it?"

She smiled. "Only several times."

"Oh. Then good." He kissed her again. "I felt it enough for a thousand. ~ Tessa Dare

Black music has become a commercial commodity. Live performances are not so accessible as they were previously. It use to be possible to go to the bar on the corner and hear music. It was available for a fifteen cent beer. ~ Archie Shepp

There's a saying in my business that there are two kinds of coaches - those who have been fired and those who haven't been fired yet. That's kind of like prostate cancer. Every man will have it if he lives long enough. ~ Bobby Bowden

Some are wrong because they are not strong enough to fight temptation and some some are wrong because they do not know. ~ Arsene Wenger

And while she works on herself, moving ahead in her career, expanding her mind through books and art, and keeping her life fulfilled with hobbies, family, and good friends, she's waiting, waiting for that man who will remain poised, sharp, and attentive in the face of her past hurts, present insecurities, and future dreams. And that's what the Shit Test is meant to find - the man who is smart and sharp enough to make her insecurities feel like they're inconsequential or baseless; the man who will protect her - not necessarily from the outside world - she's a tough chick and can do that on her own - but from herself. ~ Olyvia Apple

A bizarrerie of fires, cunabulum of light, it moved with a deft, almost dainty deliberation, phasing into and out of existence like a storm-shot piece of evening; or perhaps the darkness between the flares was more akin to its truest nature swirl of black ashes assembled in prancing cadence to the lowing note of desert wind down the arroyo behind buildings as empty yet filled as the pages of unread books or stillnesses between the notes of a song. ~ Roger Zelazny

I peeked up at him one more time, and regretted it. He was glaring down at me again, his black eyes full of revulsion. As I flinched away from him, shrinking against my chair, the phrase if looks could kill suddenly ran through my mind. ~ Stephenie Meyer

I knew her well enough to see that the sight of so many books in one room was something of a dream to her. ~ Stephenie Meyer

I got hit on at the bar last night, and this morning I have a black eye. Sometimes you can be so sexy that you offend, I guess. ~ Jarod Kintz

Even though cats spend most of the day dozing comfortably, we like our humans to keep busy. Not in a noisy or intrusive way - just active enough to entertain us during those periods when we choose to remain awake. Why else do you think most cats have a favorite theater seat - a preferred spot on a windowsill, porch, gatepost, or cupboard top? Don't you realize, dear reader, that you are our entertainment? ~ David Michie

There are dozens of ways of failing to make money. It is one thing to fail to make money because your single talent happens to be a flair amounting to genius for translating the plays of Aristophanes. It is quite another thing to fail to make money because you are black, or a child, or a woman. ~ Margaret Halsey

If you took all the killing in Star Wars and replaced it with fucking, you'd have an R-rated movie instead of PG. You ask me what's wrong with society? That's what's fucking wrong with society, that's everything that's wrong with society. From the age we're old enough to watch Star Wars we're told that sexuality is something we should be shy and timid about, while violence makes us heroes. Something we were designed to do is secret and shameful. Something we should never do is how we get things done. Star Wars is a great movie, don't get me wrong, but if you think its more acceptable for children than Looking For Alaska, because of the latter's sexual content, then your view of what it means to be human is seriously disturbed. ~ Max Davine

I'll wait for you as long as it takes, Evan," he says.
"I'll test your patience," I warn, my smile beginning to show itself again.
"You already do. ~ Lilly Black

I am proud and honored to be part of the America Supports You Freedom Walk to honor the victims of 9/11 and to support our men and women in uniform. ~ Clint Black

I'm not of the American ilk that, you know, your lover needs to be your best friend and know you inside out. I think he should know you well enough to please you. Otherwise, what secret will there be to tell him when you're ninety? ~ Padma Lakshmi

(...) The floor itself was inscribed with a mosaic in the data-pattern mode, representing the entire body of the Curia case law. At the center, small icons representing constitutional principles sent out lines to each case in which they were quoted; bright lines for controlling precedent, dim lines for dissenting opinions or dicta. Each case quoted in a later case sent out additional lines, till the concentric circles of floor-icons were meshed in a complex network.

The jest of the architect was clear to Phaethon. The floor mosaic was meant to represent the fixed immutability of the law; but the play of light from the pool above made it seem to ripple and sway and change with each little breeze.

Above the floor, not touching it, without sound or motion, hovered three massive cubes of black material.

These cubes were the manifestations of the Judges. The cube shape symbolized the solidity and implacable majesty of the law. Their high position showed they were above emotionalism or earthly appeals. The crown of each cube bore a thick-armed double helix of heavy gold.

The gold spirals atop the black cubes were symbols of life, motion, and energy. Perhaps they represented the active intellects of the Curia. Or perhaps they represented that life and civilization rested on the solid foundations of the law. If so, this was another jest of the architect. The law, it seemed, rested on nothing. ~ John C. Wright

Maybe none of us really understands what we've lived through or feel we've had enough time."

Never Let Me Go ~ Kasuo Ishiguro