Black Like Me Important Quotes

The Black-Eye-of-the-Month Club I was born with water on the brain. Okay, so that's not exactly true. I was actually born with too much cerebral spinal fluid inside my skull. But cerebral spinal fluid is just the doctors' fancy way of saying brain grease. And brain grease works inside the lobes like car grease works inside an engine. It keeps things running smooth and fast. But weirdo me, I was born with too much grease inside my skull, and it got all thick and muddy and disgusting, and it only mucked up the works. My thinking and breathing and living engine slowed down and flooded. My brain was drowning in grease. But ~ Sherman Alexie

I know a lot of people have a hard time talking dirty - they dont know what to say, how to start, or when to end it. Also, at first they will think they sound ridiculous. And they might. But let me just say that talking dirty is so important in sex. And its pretty easy. To wit: Establish from the very beginning that you like this. And trust me, you want to do it early on. Because if you wait too long to introduce the concept, your Special Lady Friend will be a little thrown and might not take you seriously. ~ Olivia Munn

Frustration and I have become good friends. And like any friend who's a bad influence, frustration sometimes makes me do things that are, in retrospect, stupid. - Sirensong ~ Jenna Black

I don't like you, Park," she said, sounding for a second like she actually meant it. "I ... " - her voice nearly disappeared - "think I live for you."
He closed his eyes and pressed his head back into his pillow.
"I don't think I even breathe when we're not together," she whispered. "Which means, when I see you on Monday morning, it's been like sixty hours since I've taken a breath. That's probably why I'm so crabby, and why I snap at you. All I do when we're apart is think about you, and all I do when we're together is panic. Because every second feels so important. And because I'm so out of control, I can't help myself. I'm not even mine anymore, I'm yours, and what if you decide that you don't want me? How could you want me like I want you?"
He was quiet. He wanted everything she'd just said to be the last thing he heard. He wanted to fall asleep with 'I want you' in his ears. ~ Rainbow Rowell

Black as
the centre of an eye, the centre, a blackness
that sucks at light. I love your vigilance
Night, first mother of songs, give me the voice to sing of you
in those fingers lies the bridle of the four winds.
Crying out, offering words of homage to you, I am
only a shell where the ocean is still sounding.
But I have looked too long into human eyes.
Reduce me now to ashes
Night, like a black sun. ~ Marina Tsvetaeva

He opened the door for me with an impassive expression. Oh, but he couldn't fool me. I knew very well that he gloated inside. He had the right to. I'd be gloating aloud if I were him. I slid into the plush black leather seat and ran my hands over every surface I could touch after buckling my seatbelt. Awe, like a slow burning fuse, spread all over my body. My fingertips sizzled. It was one thing to hear Gramps talk and completely another to actually sit inside the fantasy.

"Should I give you two some time alone?"


"What?"


His smile gave me unexpected quivers.

"Stop molesting my car. ~ Kate Evangelista

Those beautiful girls, so happy when you acted like a gentleman and all of that, just to touch them and carry the memory of it back to my room, where dust gathered upon my typewriter and Pedro the mouse sat in his hole, his black eyes watching me through that time of dream and reverie. Pedro the mouse, a good mouse but never domesticated, refusing to be petted or house-broken. I saw him the first time I walked into my room, and that was during my heyday, when The Little Dog Laughed was in the current August issue. It was five months ago, the day I got to town by bus from Colorado with a hundred and fifty dollars in my pocket and big plans in my head. I had a philosophy in those days. I was a lover of man and beast alike, and Pedro was no exception; but cheese got expensive, Pedro called all his friends, the room swarmed with them, and I had to quit it and feed them bread. They didn't like bread. I had spoiled them and they went elsewhere, all but Pedro the ascetic who was content to eat the pages of an old Gideon Bible. ~ John Fante

My only constant is the black hair tie around my wrist. No mans gonna be there for me like this hair tie has. No ones presence is gonna be as reassuring. ~ Unknown

Jones looks like he wants to slug me, which is only subtly different from his usual way of looking at me like I'm a slug. ~ Holly Black

You'll have to pardon me," the magus said. "But with your country at war I can't see how any of it really matters."
Standing up, Eugenides pulled the papers from the magus's hands. "It matters, because I can't do anything, anymore, for this country, and it matters," he yelled as he threw the papers back to his desk, "because I only have one hand and it isn't even the right one!" Turning, he picked an inkpot off the desk and threw it to shatter on the door of his wardrobe, spraying black ink across the pale wood and onto the wall. Black drops like rain stained the sheets of his bed.
...
Eddis sighed. "Will you sit down and stop shouting?" she asked.
"I'll stop shouting. I won't sit down. I might need to throw more inkpots. ~ Megan Whalen Turner

Your personal life, your professional life, and your creative life are all intertwined. I went through a few very difficult years where I felt like a failure. But it was actually really important for me to go through that. Struggle, for me, is the most inspirational thing in the world at the end of the day - as long as you treat it that way. ~ Skylar Grey

When Anu the Sublime, King of the Anunnaki, and Bel, the lord of Heaven and earth, who decreed the fate of the land assigned to Marduk, the over-ruling son of Ea, God of righteousness, dominion over earthly man, and made him great among the Igigi, they called Babylon by his illustrious name, made it great on earth, and founded an everlasting kingdom in it, whose foundations are laid so solidly as those of heaven and earth; then Anu and Bel called by name me, Hammurabi, the exalted prince, who feared God, to bring about the rule of righteousness in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil-doers; so that the strong should not harm the weak, so that I should rule over the black-headed people like Shamash and enlighten the land, to further the well-being of mankind.

...When Marduk sent me to rule over men, to give the protection of right to the land, I did right and righteousness in . . . , and brought about the well-being of the oppressed.

[The oldest known written code of laws from around 1772 BCE] ~ Hammurabi

Unlike an envied and admirable few, I separate my friends and almost never dare mingle one group with another. When I do, it is usually a social disaster, like mixing drinks. I love good beer and I love good wine, but you cannot drink both on the same evening without suffering. I love the friends with whom I play or once daily played snooker and tooted quantities of high-grade pulverized Andean flake; I love the friends with whom I dine at preposterously expensive restaurants; I love the friends with whom I'm film-making or mincing on the stage. I love and value them all equally and don't think of them as stratified or in tiers, one group in some way higher or more important than the rest, but the thought of introducing them to each other makes me shiver and shudder with cringing embarrassment. ~ Stephen Fry

Being on the same level as everybody is really important to me. I'm trying to do really basic stuff like communicate, convey, talk, see, and invite joining and intimacy. What I'm trying to do is attach. It's not about being separate. ~ Sue Tompkins

I wanted to belong, like everyone else around me did, but there was no country I could say was mine. I had no one to tell me that many other people in the world have a fragmented identity; that it doesn't matter. That who we are as a person is what's important. ~ Hyeonseo Lee

Mr. Wonderful was probably taking his sweet time, right?"
"No, it was actually my fault this morning. I was busy with…paperwork."
"Oh. Well, that's alright. Don't worry about it. What kind of paperwork?"
He smiled. "Nothing important."
Mr. Kadam held the door for me, and we walked out into an empty hallway. I was just starting to relax at the elevator doors when I heard a hotel room door close. Ren walked down the hall toward us. He'd purchased new clothes. Of course, he looked wonderful. I took a step back from the elevator and tried to avoid eye contact.
Ren wore a brand new pair of dark-indigo, purposely faded, urban-destruction designer jeans. His shirt was long-sleeved, buttoned-down, crisp, oxford-style and was obviously of high quality. It was blue with thin white stripes that matched is eyes perfectly. He'd rolled up the sleeves and left his shirt untucked and open at the collar. It was also an athletic cut, so it fit tightly to his muscular torso, which made me suck in an involuntary breath in appreciation of his male splendor.
He looks like a runway model. How in the world am I going to be able to reject that? The world is so unfair. Seriously, it's like turning Brad Pitt down for a date. The girl who could actually do it should win an award for idiot of the century.
I again quickly ran through my list of reasons for not being with Ren and said a few "He's not for me's." The good thing about seeing his mouthwatering self and watchi ~ Colleen Houck

A white lady came running up to me after a show. She goes, What gives you the right to do jokes about black people like that. And I'm like, Listen lady, my best friend is Cuban. And that's close enough. ~ Daniel Tosh

I'm trained as an architect; writing is like architecture. In buildings, there are design motifs that occur again and again, that repeat
patterns, curves. These motifs help us feel comfortable in a physical space. And the same works in writing, I've found. For me, the way words, punctuation and paragraphs fall on the page is important as well
the graphic design of the language. That was why the words and thoughts of Estha and Rahel, the twins, were so playful on the page ... I was being creative with their design. Words were broken apart, and then sometimes fused together. "Later" became "Lay. Ter." "An owl" became "A Nowl." "Sour metal smell" became "sourmetal smell."
Repetition I love, and used because it made me feel safe. Repeated words and phrases have a rocking feeling, like a lullaby. They help take away the shock of the plot
death, lives destroyed or the horror of the settings
a crazy, chaotic, emotional house, the sinister movie theater. ~ Arundhati Roy

Listen and listen good, shitbrain. If you ever touch someone I love again, I will shove this cross down your throat and watch you choke on it. You want to know why a Prince of Hell wanted me so bad? Now you do. I'm not a nice girl. I'm a Seer. It is my job to save the people of the world from vultures like you. Now you take that back to whoever your boss is and let him come find me, if he's stupid enough. I'll bury you all if I have to. ~ Kyoko M.

I leaned my head back. "I look worse than I did the night you met me."
"I thought you looked fine."
I rolled my head to the side, so I could see him. Hoping the shadows made it so he couldn't see me. "What are you talking about? I looked like a Cirque du Soleil performer."
"What are you talking about?"
"The black dots around my eyes?"
He shook his head. "I'm lost."
"You were staring--"
"Oh, yeah." He gazed through the windshield. "Sorry about that. I've just never seen eyes as green as yours. I was trying to figure out if you wore contacts."
"You were looking at my eyes?"
"Yeah."
"Not the makeup?"
He turned his attention back to me. "I didn't realize you were wearing any. That night, anyway. Tonight it's pretty obvious."
"Oh." Didn't I feel silly? "I thought--" I shook my head. "Never mind." On second thought...
"You don't like all the makeup?"
"I just don't think you need it. I mean, you look pretty without it."
Oh, really? That was totally unexpected. ~ Rachel Hawthorne

A fan sent me a pair of fluffy winter socks, and I was like, 'Oh, that's cool. I'll wear them to bed. It's cold; it's winter.' But they were worn. They were black underneath, and they stunk, and I hate feet. She was like, 'I'm giving you my favorite pair.' ~ Ella Henderson

It comes to me every day of my life that a home spirit is being awakened amongst us, that as a nation we are beginning to realize how important it is to have homes of our own, homes that we like, that we have been instrumental in building, that we will want to have belong to our children. ~ Gustav Stickley

the six of us are supposed to drive to the diner in Hastings for lunch. But the moment we enter the cavernous auditorium where the girls told us to meet them, my jaw drops and our plans change.

"Holy shit - is that a red velvet chaise lounge?"

The guys exchange a WTF look. "Um…sure?" Justin says. "Why - "

I'm already sprinting toward the stage. The girls aren't here yet, which means I have to act fast. "For fuck's sake, get over here," I call over my shoulder.

Their footsteps echo behind me, and by the time they climb on the stage, I've already whipped my shirt off and am reaching for my belt buckle. I stop to fish my phone from my back pocket and toss it at Garrett, who catches it without missing a beat.

"What is happening right now?" Justin bursts out.

I drop trou, kick my jeans away, and dive onto the plush chair wearing nothing but my black boxer-briefs. "Quick. Take a picture."

Justin doesn't stop shaking his head. Over and over again, and he's blinking like an owl, as if he can't fathom what he's seeing.

Garrett, on the other hand, knows better than to ask questions. Hell, he and Hannah spent two hours constructing origami hearts with me the other day. His lips twitch uncontrollably as he gets the phone in position.

"Wait." I pause in thought. "What do you think? Double guns, or double thumbs up?"

"What is happening?"

We both ignore Justin's baffled e ~ Elle Kennedy

In Black Like Me, I tried to establish one simple fact, which was to reveal the insanity of a situation where a man is judged by his skin color, by his philosophical "accident" - rather than by who he is in his humanity. ~ John Howard Griffin

Gregori stepped away from the huddled mass of tourists, putting distance between himself and the guide. He walked completely erect,his head high, his long hair flowing around him. His hands were loose at his sides, and his body was relaxed, rippling with power.
"Hear me now, ancient one." His voice was soft and musical, filling the silence with beauty and purity. "You have lived long in this world, and you weary of the emptiness. I have come in anwer to your call."
"Gregori.The Dark One." The evil voice hissed and growled the words in answer. The ugliness tore at sensitive nerve endings like nails on a chalkboard. Some of the tourists actually covered their ears. "How dare you enter my city and interfere where you have no right?"
"I am justice,evil one. I have come to set your free from the bounaries holding you to this place." Gregori's voice was so soft and hypnotic that those listening edged out from their sanctuaries.It beckoned and pulled, so that none could resist his every desire.
The black shape above their head roiled like a witch's cauldron. A jagged bolt of lightning slammed to earth straight toward the huddled group. Gregori raised a hand and redirected the force of energy away from the tourists and Savannah. A smile edged the cruel set of his mouth. "You think to mock me with display,ancient one? Do not attempt to anger what you do not understand.You came to me.I did not hunt you.You seek to threaten my lifemate and those I count as my friends ~ Christine Feehan

Spending time by myself is VERY important to me and I wake up pretty early, I wake up around 5 in the morning, and I get to have a couple hours to myself, and that is definitely I think really important to me and I think it's important for moms to have that too. And I love to carve out time for myself and sometimes I'll hang out with girlfriends, but i like to keep things pretty intimate. ~ Nicole Richie

When the devil makes his offer (always open incidentally) of the kingdoms of the earth, it is the bordellos which glow so alluringly to most of us, not the banks and the counting-houses and the snow-swept corridors of power ... Sex is the mysticism of a materialistic society - in the beginning was the Flesh, and the Flesh became Word; with its own mysteries - this is my birth pill; swallow it in remembrance of me! - and its own sacred texts and scriptures - the erotica which fall like black atomic rain on the just and unjust alike, drenching us, stupefying us. To be carnally minded is life! ~ Malcolm Muggeridge

If [black] nationalism could create a strong and effective insularity, deliver on its promise of self-respect, then the hurt it might cause well-meaning whites, or the inner turmoil it caused people like me, would be of little consequence. ~ Barack Obama

Suppose ... suppose we have only dreamed and made up these things like sun, sky, stars, and moon, and Aslan himself. In that case, it seems to me that the made-up things are a good deal better than the real ones. And if this black pits of a kingdom is the best you can make, then it's a poor world. And we four can make a dream world to lick your real one hollow. ~ C.S. Lewis

Touring is always important to me. It's like a big IOU to my fans, because I know they are the reason I exist. ~ Katy Perry

I think I sent one [book] to Brian Eno. I don't know how I got to know his address, but I sent one to him. He called me up and he said, "I really like the book, and I'm starting a new label, would you liked to do something?" It was a tricky situation for me, because I've always had this thing in my life of a tension between collaboration, which was extremely important to me, and then being alone. Make of that what you will! ~ David Toop

The night sky stretched on forever above me, the stars flung like glass beads and pearls on a black velvet cloak. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

I remember I prayed to God. I was like, "Just let me be on TV." Let my friends see me on TV in a good thing. I like, if I'm funny a little bit on a commercial and then I don't need to act ever again. "Just let them see me." And then it worked. I got the commercial. I was on TV. My friends all saw me. I was a kind of a star at school for like three days. And then it faded away and I was hungry and I had to like make another deal with God. I remember it still. ~ Jack Black

All along I believed that I was important to Travis; that he needed me. But in that moment, I felt like the shiny new toy Parker said I was. He wanted to prove to Parker that I was still his. His.
"I'm nobody's," I said to the empty room.
As the words sunk in, I was overwhelmed with the grief I'd felt from the night before. I belonged to no one.
I'd never felt so alone in my life. ~ Jamie McGuire

Now I see things differently. It took me some time, but I know the secret now. Freedman Town serves a good purpose
not for the people who live there, Lord knows; people stuck there by poverty, by prejudice, by laws that keep them from moving or working. Freedman Town's purpose is for the rest of the world. The world that sits, like Martha, with dark glasses on, staring from a distance, scared but safe. Create a pen like that, give people no choice but to live like animals, and then people get to point at them and say 'Will you look at those animals? That's what kind of people those people are.' And that idea drifts up and out of Freedman Town like chimney smoke, black gets to mean poor and poor to mean dangerous and all the words get murked together and become one dark idea, a cloud of smoke, the smokestack fumes drifting like filthy air across the rest of the nation. ~ Ben H. Winters

Ii do not walk with alienation everywhere I go in the world. I have been to small taverns in rural Ohio, big city bars, San Francisco bath houses, and in all these have felt welcome and happy. But walking through that sunglassed throng, I felt like a Martian. I didn't hate the feeling - indeed, being a black woman in the academy, it wasn't new to me - but it was interesting. I kept wondering: where is the performance? When will the performance start? Is this the performance - me walking through this space without sunglasses with all these Nordic quasi-hipster white people in multi-colored, motorcycle cop sunglasses? ~ Gabrielle Civil

Guess what? The Nazis didn't lose the war after all. They won it and flourished. They took over the world and wiped out every last Jew, every last Gypsy, black, East Indian, and American Indian. Then, when they were finished with that, they wiped out the Russians and the Poles and the Bohemians and the Moravians and the Bulgarians and the Serbians and the Croatians--all the Slavs. Then they started in on the Polynesians and the Koreans and the Chinese and the Japanese--all the peoples of Asia. This took a long, long time, but when it was all over, everyone in the world was one hundred percent Aryan, and they were all very, very happy. Naturally the textbooks used in the schools no longer mentioned any race but the Aryan or any language but German or any religion but Hitlerism or any political system but National Socialism. There would have been no point. After a few generations of that, no one could have put anything different into the textbooks even if they'd wanted to, because they didn't know anything different. But one day, two young students were conversing at the University of New Heidelberg in Tokyo. Both were handsome in the usual Aryan way, but one of them looked vaguely worried and unhappy. That was Kurt. His friend said, "What's wrong, Kurt? Why are you always moping around like this?" Kurt said, "I'll tell you, Hans. There is something that's troubling me--and troubling me deeply." His friend asked what it was. "It's this," Kurt said. "I cannot shake the crazy fee ~ Daniel Quinn

He looked like he always did. Jeans and a black Foo Fighters t-shirt, his hair lay over his forehead and around his ears. I pushed my hand through it.
"It's perfect. It's you."
He grinned, shaking his head.
"Zeke told me to wear leather, lots of it."
"And you're rebelling?" I said through a laugh.
"I'm telling him to subtly screw himself. ~ Shelly Crane

When they were first casting for my part in the movie, the producers asked if I had any suggestions.
"I'll tell you what I don't want," I said. "I don't want someone in their early twenties who's never had any heartbreak or gone through anything difficult."
I heard later that Clint thought he'd have a hard time casting me. I hope that was because I'm such a complex but soulful person, though you never know.
When he settled on Sienna Miller, he hit it on the head. The first time I talked to her, it felt like I was speaking to an old girlfriend. She got everything. Whether I explained how it felt the first time Chris kissed me, or how it felt when he held me, she completely understood. She's a woman with deep empathy as well as a great actor.
My part--her part--in the movie isn't very big, but it's important, and I felt it was in good hands. She knows what it's like to be a mom, and she knows how it feels to worry about someone and to live through situations you can't control.
Still, I remained nervous: What if, despite all their efforts, they didn't manage to convey what Chris was all about? The director, the actors, they were all at the top of their field, but that was no guarantee that they could pull it off. ~ Taya Kyle

You become very angry and depressed that you keep getting offered only these exceedingly demure and repressed roles. They're so not me. That's why films like Fight Club were so important to me because I think I confounded certain stereotypes and limited perceptions of what I could do as an actress. ~ Helena Bonham Carter

I can't tell you - oh I can't tell you - how awful - how sort of unlivable - everything is now - like a great black wall in front of me - Something's got to smash. ~ Iris Murdoch