Harlem Quotes

Harlem is not a playground for rich bankers and consultants. It's got students of all colors. It's got old people who keep history and tell tall tales. ~ Marcus Samuelsson

Growing up in Harlem, I had the chance to practice with a Negro League team. At fifteen, I was over six feet tall and a fair athlete, but my skills didn't come close to some of the players I saw. ~ Walter Dean Myers

All over Harlem, Negro boys and girls are growing into stunted maturity, trying desperately to find a place to stand; and the wonder is not that so many are ruined but that so many survive. ~ James A. Baldwin

You grow up in America and you're told from day one, 'This is the land of opportunity.' That everybody has an equal chance to make it in this country. And then you look at places like Harlem, and you say, 'That is absolutely a lie.' ~ Geoffrey Canada

Harlem is a very family-oriented neighborhood, and it always has been. ~ Marcia Gay Harden

'Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream' is an intentionally angry film. How could it not be when the chance of an infant dying is five times greater on the Bronx Park Avenue than on Manhattan's Park Avenue just across the Harlem River? ~ Alex Gibney

For me, growing up in Harlem and then migrating down to SoHo and the Lower East Side and chillin' down there and making that my stomping ground ... That was a big thing, because I'm from Harlem, and downtown is more artsy and also more open-minded. So I got the best of both worlds. ~ ASAP Rocky

he just accepted my dart of irritation, my pinch of meanness. ~ Harlem Dae

I've worked over four dozen nine-to-five jobs before taking the chance to chase my dream of wanting to become an actor and filmmaker. Growing up in Brooklyn and Harlem, working at jobs like the bus company were great. I had benefits, a great salary, and security. But it wasn't my dream. ~ Malcolm Goodwin

We get along, we talk music.Lenny Kravitz took me to Harlem to see this little jazz show in the back of a church. It was just shitty fluorescent lights and a small stage piano, but this band tore it up. ~ Penn Dayton Badgley

I wasn't quite sure how I felt about a messy woman. ~ Harlem Dae

With an annual investment of $66 billion by 2007, we can save 8 million lives each year. ~ Gro Harlem Brundtland

A winter ago I had an after-school seminar for high-school students and in one of the early sessions Una, a brilliant fifteen-year-old, a born writer who came to Harlem from Panama five years ago, and only then discovered the conflict between races, asked me, "Mrs. Franklin, do you really and truly believe in God with no doubts at all?"
"Oh, Una, I really and truly believe in God with all kinds of doubts."
But I base my life on this belief. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

Crisis' seems to be too mild a word to describe conditions in countless African-American communities. It is beyond crisis when in the richest nation in the world, African Americans in Harlem live shorter lives than the people of Bangladesh, one of the poorest nations of the world. ~ Johnnetta B. Cole

The police can go to downtown Harlem and pick up a kid with a joint in the streets. But they can't go into the elegant apartments and get a stockbroker who's sniffing cocaine. ~ Noam Chomsky

I never think about themes. I let the music create itself. I like it to be a potpourri of all kinds of sounds, all kinds of colors, something for everybody, from the farmer in Ireland to the lady who scrubs toilets in Harlem. ~ Michael Jackson

I'd love to go to art school. I'd love to learn how to draw. I'd love to be fluent in Spanish. I'd like to be a brain surgeon. ~ Billie Joe Armstrong

Health is the core of human development. ~ Gro Harlem Brundtland

There were the people that believed in me when I was walking around Spanish Harlem, saying that I was going to be a Hollywood actress. They were like, 'Yeah, you could do it!' ~ Paula Garces

It seemed that there was no time to catch up with all the things that were happening. I would be at the construction workers' demonstration one day and then marching with the welfare mothers the next. We got down with everything - the rent strikes, the sit-ins, the takeover of the Harlem state office building, whatever it was. If we agreed with it, we would try to give active support in some way. The more active i became, the more i liked it. It was like medicine, making me well, making me whole ...
My energy just couldn't stop dancing. I was caught up in the music of the struggle and i wanted to dance. I was never bored and never lonely, and the brothers and sisters who became my friends were so beautiful to me. ~ Assata Shakur

We are also in the process of defining how best to work together with food and other companies to address diet and physical activity factors in order to prevent chronic diseases. ~ Gro Harlem Brundtland

The launch of the report coincides with the initiation by WHO of the global strategy for the prevention and control of osteoporosis, and I think a good partnership could be established in our common efforts to prevent osteoporosis. ~ Gro Harlem Brundtland

In the invincible and indescribable squalor of Harlem ... I was tormented. I felt caged, like an animal. I wanted to escape. I felt if I did not get out I would slowly strangle. ~ James A. Baldwin

I came to Harlem from West Virginia when I was three, after my mother died. My father, who was very poor, gave me up to two wonderful people, my foster parents. ~ Walter Dean Myers

They were utterly fearless. I did not understand it until I looked out on the street. That was where I saw white parents pushing double-wide strollers down gentrifying Harlem boulevards in T-shirts and jogging shorts. Or I saw them lost in conversation with each other, mother and father, while their sons commanded entire sidewalks with their tricycles. The galaxy belonged to them, and as terror was communicated to our children, I saw mastery communicated to theirs. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

Many people in this country who want to see us the minority, and who don't want to see us taking too militant or too uncompromising a stand, are absolutely against the successful regrouping or organising of any faction in this country whose thought and whose thinking pattern is international rather than national ... There's a world wide revolution going on, it goes beyond Mississippi, it goes beyond Alabama, it goes beyond Harlem. What is it revolting against? The power structure. The American power structure? No. The French power structure? No. The English power structure? No. Then, what power structure? An international Western power structure. ~ Malcolm X

Such lifestyle factors such as cigarette smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, little physical activity and low dietary calcium intake are risk factors for osteoporosis as well as for many other non-communicable diseases. ~ Gro Harlem Brundtland

You white folks see UFOs in your dreams. You don't hear about Martians in Harlem. ~ Paul Mooney

Dance Theatre of Harlem has done a lot of good things well, a lot of good things badly, and a lot of bad things - it doesn't matter how. ~ Robert Gottlieb

Yes," I said, staring at the way the sunshine glinted, quite prettily, on the broken fragments. Odd that something so wrecked could be so beautiful. ~ Harlem Dae

Marcus Samuelsson is a chef who inspires me everyday. He has such a deep understanding of flavors and techniques. His food is representative of the diverse world that we live in. What he has done in Harlem with Red Rooster is very special. Marcus is not just a chef, he's a food activist. ~ Aaron Sanchez

It's very difficult to evaluate a leader in a very short-term perspective because to be a leader you must be able to have a long-term perspective. You must be able to carry changes which take many years. And this is why you can really only see whether it has been a good leadership after some years have passed. ~ Gro Harlem Brundtland

I'm engaged in food on so many levels, and I love that. So my work, my craft, is around food, and writing is one aspect of it; communicating a narrative, cooking online is one aspect of it; solving the food chasm that we have in Harlem and finding a farmers market is another one, and all of them are equally exciting for me. ~ Marcus Samuelsson

Motherfucking right, it's confusing; it's a gas, baby, you dig." (A Harlem intellectual) ~ Chester Himes

My grandfather taught me generosity. He sold snow cones in Harlem. I went with him at 5 and he let me hand out the change and snow cones. I learned a lot in the couple of years that we did that. ~ Erik Estrada

I look around me and I don't see any rock'n'roll at the moment. Instead it's all choreography and stylists and wigs and stuff. It's like they're afraid to let the music breathe. No one has their own identity like the Ronettes did back in the day. We had the skirts with the slits up the side, sort of tough, sort of Spanish Harlem cool, but sweet too. We didn't have no dancers, we didn't have no goddamn wigs. ~ Ronnie Spector

There can be no real growth without healthy populations. No sustainable development without tackling disease and malnutrition. No international security without assisting crisis-ridden countries. And no hope for the spread of freedom, democracy and human dignity unless we treat health as a basic human right. ~ Gro Harlem Brundtland

I disagree with Muhammad. I'm against hate, anti-Semitism and homophobia. ... This is not a village of hate. It's a village of hope. ... Don't let midgets give us a bad name. There are still giants in Harlem giants who will stand up for our children. ~ Al Sharpton

As long as what is is-and Georgia is Georgia-I will take Harlem for mine. At least, if trouble comes, I will have my own window to shoot from. ~ Langston Hughes

He was a manager, one of the singers, I guess talent coordinator for the local talent in Harlem. His name was Lover Patterson. He was living right across the street from where my dad had his restaurant. I guess he saw a lot of kids come in, a lot of my buddies. ~ Ben E. King

Intervention for the prevention and control of osteoporosis should comprise a combination of legislative action, educational measures, health service activities, media coverage, and individual counselling to initiate changes in behaviour. ~ Gro Harlem Brundtland

Whether or not anybody had invented the category in his lifetime, Babe Ruth was surely the Greatest Living Yankee almost immediately upon lofting home runs at the Polo Grounds, allowing the Yankees to build their own palace across the Harlem River. ~ George Vecsey

During my nearly five years as director-general of WHO, high-level policymakers have increasingly recognized that health is central to sustainable development. ~ Gro Harlem Brundtland

Thinking back to boyhood days, I remember the bright sun on Harlem streets, the easy rhythms of black and brown bodies, the sounds of children streaming in and out of red brick tenements. ~ Walter Dean Myers

When you read the words of Langston Hughes you are reading the words of a Black Gay man. When you read the words of Alice Dunbar-Nelson and Angelina Weld Grimké, poets of the Harlem Renaissance, you are reading the words of Black Lesbians. When you listen to the life-affirming voices of Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey, you are hearing Black Lesbian women. When you see the plays and read the words of Lorraine Hansberry, you are reading the words of a women who loved women deeply. ~ Audre Lorde

New York is an exploited colony called Brownsville
Bedford Stuyvesant or Harlem
Where tiny fat Jews are holding the fiery hoop
Watching you burn your ass jumping through it ~ Abiodun Oyewole

I started reading. I read everything I could get my hands on ... By the time I was thirteen I had read myself out of Harlem. I had read every book in two libraries and had a card for the Forty-Second Street branch. ~ James A. Baldwin

I live in Harlem, New York City. I am unmarried. I like 'Tristan,' goat's milk, short novels, lyric poems, heat, simple folk, boats and bullfights; I dislike 'Aida,' parsnips, long novels, narrative poems, cold, pretentious folk, buses and bridges. ~ Langston Hughes

To change societies you need to organize with others who share your views. ~ Gro Harlem Brundtland

What do we call our Harlem Renaissance? Maybe in the future, it won't be just Latino, maybe it'll be more multi-multi, because, you know, people are such fusions now, of so many different cultures. ~ Sandra Cisneros

Go to any police-and-community meeting in Brooklyn, the Bronx, or Harlem, and you will hear pleas such as the following: Teens are congregating on my stoop; can you please arrest them? SUVs are driving down the street at night with their stereos blaring; can't you do something? People have been barbecuing on the pedestrian islands of Broadway; that's illegal! The targets of these complaints may be black and Hispanic, but the people making the complaints, themselves black and Hispanic, don't care. They just want orderly streets. ~ Heather Mac Donald

Kati with an I was a New York Times Critics' Pick and I was really happy that it got a run uptown in Harlem at the Maysles Cinema, which is a great space but isn't necessarily the most well attended for a week-long screening. ~ Robert Greene

Although approximately 80% of osteoporosis sufferers are women, as the longevity of the male population increases, the disease will assume increasing importance in men. ~ Gro Harlem Brundtland

And even as this old guide-book boasts of the, to us, insignificant Liverpool of fifty years ago, the New York guidebooks are now vaunting of the magnitude of a town, whose future inhabitants, multitudinous as the pebbles on the beach, and girdled in with high walls and towers, flanking endless avenues of opulence and taste, will regard all our Broadways and Bowerys as but the paltry nucleus to their Nineveh. From far up the Hudson, beyond Harlem River where the young saplings are now growing, that will overarch their lordly mansions with broad boughs, centuries old; they may send forth explorers to penetrate into the then obscure and smoky alleys of the Fifth Avenue and Fourteenth Street; and going still farther south, may exhume the present Doric Custom-house, and quote it as a proof that their high and mighty metropolis enjoyed a Hellenic antiquity. ~ Herman Melville

At first, Hendrix went and became a superstar in London, but if he walked past the Apollo in Harlem, no one would know who he was. I'm the hip-hop version of him. ~ Nayvadius Cash

Harlem is a stage. It's like its own planet, from the way we dress to the swag in the way we walk and talk. ~ Teyana Taylor

An important lever for sustained action in tackling poverty and reducing hunger is money. ~ Gro Harlem Brundtland

Cause I can love a poem up out of you-like my middle name is Harlem..and my fingerprints are permanent-you ain't gone wash me off darlin ~ Antares Davinci

In Harlem, Negro policemen are feared more than whites, for they have more to prove and fewer ways to prove it ~ James Baldwin

It was clear just how much Tommy loved the city. New York City. The CKY Grocery on Amsterdam had giant, bright red Spartan apples every day of the year, even if it wasn't the right season. He loved that grocery, and the old, shaky Persian man who owned it. Tommy emphatically, yet erroneously believed that the CKY Grocery was the genuine heart of the great city. All five boroughs embodied distinct feelings for him, but there was only one that he'd ever truly romanticized. To him, Manhattan was the entire world.

He loved everything between the East River and the Hudson; from the Financial District up to Harlem; from Avenue A to Zabar's. He loved the four
seasons, although autumn was easily the most anticipated. To Tommy, Central Park's bright, almost copper hues in the fall were the epitome of orange. He loved the unique perfume of deli meats and subway steam. He loved the rain with such verve that every time it so much as drizzled, he would turn to the sky so he could feel the drops sprinkle onto his teeth. Because every raindrop that hit him had already experienced that much envied journey from the tips of the skyscrapers all the way down to the cracked and foot-stamped sidewalks. He believed every inch of the city had its own predetermined genre of music that suited it to a tee. The modal jazz of Miles Davis and Wayne Shorter was absolutely meant for the Upper East Side, north of 61st Street. Precisely between Gershwin and gospel. He loved the view from his a ~ Ryan Tim Morris

Usually the German translators do something terrible, especially with Tom Wolfe, which is that they make it local. So if the characters are from Harlem, the translators put all this Berlin slang into their mouths, and that's just terrible. You cringe when you read that. But there really is no good solution to the problem, except learning English. ~ Daniel Kehlmann

I especially like Duke Ellington jazz, which is a little more ... I lived in New York for a while. I lived in Harlem for a bit, and I just fell in love with the idea of that era of New York, that jazz era, especially jazz in Harlem. ~ Charlie Day

You know gentrification is deep when a garage rock band made up of three white boys is called "Harlem". ~ Kara Lee Corthron

Lewis: "It's been a tough set of matches, my focus and commitment hasn't wavered, but even so, something amazing has happened. A kind, intelligent beautiful woman has fallen in love with me. (stepping into the crowd, and reporters move out of the way) Hi honey."
Nicky: "Hi."
Lewis: "I'm in love with you, Nicky. And knowing you feel the same made this the best day of my life. ~ Lily Harlem

I don't know why people always compare me [ with Amiri Baraka] I was never part of the Black Arts Repertory Theater or the Black Arts Movement; people who claim that I was are wrong. I was downtown. I was living in Chelsea when they were operating in Harlem. ~ Ishmael Reed

We don't windsurf in Harlem. ~ Charles B. Rangel

It was a pretty rough neighborhood where I grew up The really tough places were over around Third Avenue where it ran into the Harlem River, but we weren't far away. ~ Norman Rockwell

Living at the YMCA in Harlem dramatically broadened my view of the world. ~ Constance Baker Motley

And Alpo ordered guys to slaughter guys, and the whole Harlem was in tears when Rich Porter died. ~ Cam'ron

My fellow Wilmington, North Carolina native Meadowlark Lemon is a true national treasure. I watched him play for the Harlem Globetrotters when I was growing up and his skill with the basketball and dedication to the game were an inspiration not only to me, but to kids all around the world. ~ Michael Jordan

Harlem was the main chance for the east end of New York, for eastsiders, as that real estate boom that took place in the 1890s - and it was a preposterous one where people bought and sold, and everything appreciated with each sale - and eventually, of course, the house of cards would crumble. ~ David Levering Lewis

To the memory of Vincent Van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, El Greco, and many others who came before me as well as those who will come after. We are one. Thank you. ~ Luther E. Vann

Ghetto was from Newark and Spazo was from the Polo Grounds in Harlem. Ghetto's family lived in Harlem. ~ Dion Perkins

Colored folks in Harlem didn't want to get caught by the police whether they had done anything or not. ~ Chester Himes

In Harlem, for instance, all of the stores are owned by white people, all of the buildings are owned by white people. The black people are just there - paying rent, buying the groceries; but they don't own the stores, clothing stores, food stores, any kind of stores; don't even own the homes that they live in. They are all owned by outsiders, and for these run-down apartment dwellings, the black man in Harlem pays more money than the man down in the rich Park Avenue section. ~ Malcolm X

despite her being off-the-wall, difficult to understand, and a massive ball of tension, I loved her, goddamn it. I wanted to spend the rest of my life getting to know her. ~ Harlem Dae

When public and private sectors combine intellectual and other resources, more can be achieved. ~ Gro Harlem Brundtland

Women's health is one of WHO's highest priorities. ~ Gro Harlem Brundtland

Before I started LimoLand, I mainly bought my clothes in Harlem, where I found clothing my size in fun colors. I still like to go there and see the vibrancy and colors of the neighborhood. I am also very influenced by the colors of my contemporary African and Japanese art collections. ~ Jean Pigozzi

So this was how it was going to be, was it? This love business, so difficult on the emotions yet so joyous to experience. I liked it and hated it in equal measure. ~ Harlem Dae

David Henderson's 1970 poem "Keep on Pushing," also analyzed the geographies of urban warfare in the Summer of 1964's Harlem Riots. Henderson warned of the crude mathematics of wide avenues that can swallow protest pickets, easily dismantle popular barricades, and muster five hundred cops in fifteen minutes, but he also suggests how, "For Harlem/ reinforcements come from the Bronx / just over the three-borough Bridge. / a shot a cry a rumor / can muster five hundred Negroes / from idle and strategic street corners / bars stoops hallways windows. ~ Anonymous

These dreams
These empty dreams
from the make-believe bedrooms
their parents left them
are the after-effects
of television programs
about the ideal
white american family
with black maids
and latino janitors
who are well train
to make everyone
and their bill collectors
laugh at them
and the people they represent ~ Pedro Pietri

Is sending the Harlem Globetrotters and Dennis Rodman to the DPRK strange? In a word, yes, ~ Dennis Rodman

In the face of an absolutely unprecedented emergency, society has no choice but to take dramatic action to avert a collapse of civilization. Either we will change our ways and build an entirely new kind of global society, or they will be changed for us. ~ Gro Harlem Brundtland

Motherfuckers from Harvard to Harlem respect the Pew Research Center, and hearing this, the concerned patrons turned around in their squeaky plastic seats as best they could, given that donut shop swivel chairs swivel only six degrees in either direction. ~ Paul Beatty

I wanted to hug them all. We belonged to each other somehow...But that sweet feeling hung on and I loved all of Harlem gently and didn't want to be Puerto Rican or anything else but my own rusty self. ~ Louise Meriwether

When Harlem residents Michael McMichael and Anthony Odom drove down 161st Street in a new-looking Range Rover, police immediately profiled the car as being bought with illegal income. But when Stevie Cohen claimed to be 400 percent more efficient than the entire investing world fifteen years running, talked publicly about his billion-bucks-a-year income, and bought a 6,000-square-foot, Zamboni-treated skating rink for his mansion just a few years after opening his own business, nobody blinked until decades had passed and multiple companies had been destroyed. ~ Matt Taibbi

If there was a Harlem Globetrotters of rugby league, he'd be in it. ~ Brett Morris

When I was 17, I worked in a mentoring program in Harlem designed to improve the community. That's when I first gained an appreciation of the Harlem Renaissance, a time when African-Americans rose to prominence in American culture. For the first time, they were taken seriously as artists, musicians, writers, athletes, and as political thinkers. ~ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

We both grew up in the atmosphere of struggle, both Ossie and me, ... I come out of Harlem and Harlem comes out of me - wailing police sirens and street parties, rumors and landlords, that cultural, spiritual scene. And Ossie came up from the South, where struggle and dying were part of everyday life. That is who we are. ~ Ruby Dee

There are other tracks that are more reliant upon the beat. Like nobody's going to sit there and play "Harlem Shake" on the guitar! ~ Andrew Wyatt

It doesn't do good to open doors for someone who doesn't have the price to get in. If he has the price, he may not need the laws. There is no law saying the Negro has to live in Harlem or Watts. ~ Ronald Reagan

I wished she was a plastic tag strip, easily discarded, the annoyance of her thrown to the floor to be stomped on. ~ Harlem Dae

You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason. The limits of your ambition were, thus, expected to be set forever. You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity, and in as many ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being. You were not expected to aspire to excellence: you were expected to make peace with mediocrity. Wherever you have turned, James, in your short time on this earth, you have been told where you could go and what you could do (and how you could do it) and where you could live and whom you could marry. I know your countrymen do not agree with me about this, and I hear them saying "You exaggerate." They do not know Harlem, and I do. So do you. Take no one's word for anything, including mine- but trust your experience. Know whence you came. ~ James Baldwin

Black is beautiful .Black isn't power. Knowledge is power. You can be black as a crow or white as snow but if you don't know and you ain't got no dough, you can't go and that's for sho'. ~ Lewis H. Michaux

Lewis: "You looked beautiful tonight. In fact, you get more beautiful every time I see you."
Nicky: "I, but I was just wearing-"
Lewis: "Say thanks."
Nicky: "Okay, thanks, and you looked... muddy. ~ Lily Harlem

I like to go hear jazz late-night up in Harlem. ~ Daniel Boulud

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death in women. ~ Gro Harlem Brundtland

I have repeatedly stressed that we have the knowledge
to reduce hunger and poverty. ~ Gro Harlem Brundtland

The myth that men are the economic providers and women, mainly, are mothers and care givers in the family has now been thoroughly refuted. This family pattern has never been the norm, except in a narrow middle-class segment. ~ Gro Harlem Brundtland