Love Is Black And White Quotes

I've just been thinking it would be a lot of fun to live in a defunct shopping mall!
Totally abandoned,
Yet still frozen in time,
Bright white lights shining,
Artificial turquoise fountains spewing out clear water,
Eerie eighties elevator music drifting by…
Dancing erratically, shouting to the top,
Because it's sad to see these places die.
They're a testament to the hubris of modern America, which is dying in and of itself.
Let's face it. We know we can't compete with
Online shopping
And
Made-in-China products
And
eBay
And
Amazon.

Those of us who spent our
High school
And college days
Being wage slaves to these dying malls,
We'll be old and nostalgic someday,
Telling our grandkids about these wonderful buildings!
They housed sets of trendy clothes
Which nobody was rich enough to afford
Or thin enough to fit in.
We'll tell them about the first time
We were almost trampled in a
Black Friday stampede.
The first time we saw a kid
Vomit in the ugly rainbow ball pit
At the children's play area,
Dumped by babysitters to grow up there,
Spending their childhood draped in neon.
The first time eating greasy pad-thai
And hamburgers
At the food court.
The first time falling in love
In the dark movie theatre
That charges too much for stale popcorn.
Holdi ~ Rebecca McNutt

The Desire To Paint"

Unhappy perhaps is the man, but happy the artist, who is torn with this desire.
I burn to paint a certain woman who has appeared to me so rarely, and so swiftly fled away, like some beautiful, regrettable thing the traveller must leave behind him in the night. It is already long since I saw her.

She is beautiful, and more than beautiful: she is overpowering. The colour black preponderates in her; all that she inspires is nocturnal and profound.

Her eyes are two caverns where mystery vaguely stirs and gleams; her glance illuminates like a ray of light; it is an explosion in the darkness.

I would compare her to a black sun if one could conceive of a dark star overthrowing light and happiness.

But it is the moon that she makes one dream of most readily; the moon, who has without doubt touched her with her own influence; not the white moon of the idylls, who resembles a cold bride, but the sinister and intoxicating moon suspended in the depths of a stormy night, among the driven clouds; not the discreet peaceful moon who visits the dreams of pure men, but the moon torn from the sky, conquered and revolted, that the witches of Thessaly hardly constrain to dance upon the terrified grass.

Her small brow is the habitation of a tenacious will and the love of prey. And below this inquiet face, whose mobile nostrils breathe in the unknown and the impossible, glitters, with an unspeakable grace, t ~ Charles Baudelaire

The pretense that the "abolition of slavery" was either a motive or justification for the war, is a fraud of the same character with that of "maintaining the national honor." Who, but such usurpers, robbers, and murderers as they, ever established slavery? Or what government, except one resting upon the sword, like the one we now have, was ever capable of maintaining slavery? And why did these men abolish slavery? Not from any love of liberty in general - not as an act of justice to the black man himself, but only "as a war measure," and because they wanted his assistance, and that of his friends, in carrying on the war they had undertaken for maintaining and intensifying that political, commercial, and industrial slavery, to which they have subjected the great body of the people, both black and white. ~ Lysander Spooner

I was born into
A religion of Light,
But with so many other
Religions and
Philosophies,
How do I know which
ONE
Is right?

Is it not
My birthright
To seek out the light?
To find Truth
After surveying all the proof,
Am I supposed
To love
Or fight?
And why do all those who
Try to guide me,
Always start by dividing
And multiplying me –
From what they consider
Wrong or right?
I thought,
There were no walls
For whoever beams truth and light.
And how can one speak on Light's behalf,
lf all they do
Is act black,
But talk WHITE?


BLACK AND WHITE by Suzy Kassem ~ Suzy Kassem

Wedding Superstitions



The Bridal Gown

White - You have chosen right.
Grey - You'll go far away.
Black - You'll wish yourself back.
Red - You'll wish yourself dead.
Green - Ashamed to be seen.
Blue - You'll always be true.
Pearl - You'll live in a whirl.
Peach - A love out of reach.
Yellow - Ashamed of your fellow.
Pink - Your Spirits will sink.

The Wedding Day

Monday for health, Tuesday for wealth,
Wednesday best of all,
Thursday for losses, Friday for crosses,
Saturday for no luck at all.

The Wedding Month
Marry in May, and you'll rue the day,
Marry in Lent, you'll live to repent.

Married when the year is new,
He'll be loving, kind and true.
When February birds do mate,
You wed nor dread your fate.
If you wed when March winds blow,
Joy and sorrow both you'll know.
Marry in April when you can,
Joy for maiden and the man.
Marry in the month of May,
And you'll surely rue the day.
Marry when the June roses grow,
Over land and sea you'll go.
Those who in July do wed,
Must labour for their daily bread.
Whoever wed in August be,
Many a change is sure to see.
Marry in September's shine,
Your living will be rich and fine.
If in October you do marry,
Love will come, but riches ~ New Zealand Proverb

I have bad news for you, for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight.

Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice for his fellow human beings, and he died because of that effort.

In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black--considering the evidence there evidently is that there were white people who were responsible--you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization--black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another.

Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.
For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult ti ~ Robert F. Kennedy

How can I further encourage you to go about the business of life? Young women, I would say, and please attend, for the peroration is beginning, you are, in my opinion, disgracefully ignorant. You have never made a discovery of any sort of importance. You have never shaken an empire or led an army into battle. The plays of Shakespeare are not by you, and you have never introduced a barbarous race to the blessings of civilization. What is your excuse? It is all very blessings of civilisation. What is you excuse? it is all very well for you to say, pointing to the streets and squares and forests of the globe swarming with black and white and coffee-coloured inhabitants, all busily engaged in traffic and enterprise and love-making, we have had other work on our hands. Without our doing, those seas would be unsailed and those fertile lands a desert. We have borne and bred and washed and taught, perhaps to the age of six or seven years, the one thousand six hundred and twenty-three million human beings who are, according to statistics, at present in existence, and that, allowing that some had help, takes time.
There is truth in what you say - I will not deny it. But at the same time may I remind you that there have been at least two colleges for women in existence in England since the year 1886; that after the year 1880 a married woman was allowed by the law to possess her own property; and that in 1919 - which is a whole nine years ago - she was given a vote? May I also remin ~ Virginia Woolf

For years I happily wrote nothing but carefully researched and argued cultural history. Now with fiction I can begin where the archives end. It's like turning old black and white photos into a full-color video. Research reveals the past; fiction puts it in motion. And once history comes to life, it's clear that people then wrestled with troubles a lot like our own.
I love writing mysteries because they're ultimately about justice, and what's more complicated than guilt and innocence? I especially relish writing about crimes that pit the law against my characters' moral code. In the end justice is often about power, and the struggle over who gets to decide what's right or wrong makes for great stories in any genre. Historical mysteries are a great way into the life's most meaty stuff. ~ Marlowe Benn

Before we fully learn to love ourselves, all people of color in the United States learn that we are supporting characters and spectators in the collective story of white people's lives. The stories we watch and read ask us to put aside their whiteness and relate to their very "universal" human struggles around conflict with the world, the self, and others. The problem is that only the experiences of white people are treated as universal. Meanwhile, Black movies, shows, and books are typically seen as limited and particular. ~ Brittney Cooper

I fall in love with one special hat, but it happens to be on the head of the old Indian who is waiting on us. It is an old black hat, broken with white lines where it must have been crumpled and stepped on and kicked, and its brim droops like a hound's ear all along one side, but it is a wonderful hat, a magic hat. D'Artagnan wore a hat like that when he came up from Gascony, and Don Quixote wore a hat like that when he went home at last. Around the crown its owner has placed a thin silver band, as simply made as a wedding ring. They do look long-married, the old man and his black hat. ~ Peter S. Beagle

The only truth is face to face, the poem whose words become your
mouth
and dying in black and white we fight for what we love, not are ~ Frank O'Hara

Each time I make a photograph I celebrate the life I love and the beauty I know and the happiness I have experienced. All my photographs are made like that responding to my intuition ... After all these years, I am still motivated by the radiance that light creates when it transforms an object into something magical. What the eye sees is an illusion of what is real. The black-and-white image is yet another transformation. What exactly exists, we may never know. ~ Ruth Bernhard

The world likes to see things in black and white, in moral and immoral. But there is gray in between. And just because a person is capable of wickedness, doesen't mean they will act upon it. ~ T.J. Klune

Most kids who don't feel enough love and nurturance carry around this kind of inner rage- a rage that often lasts throughout adulthood. The people who should have cared for them didn't. The lesson to take away: All people are shit. This is why troubled youth walk around with chips on their shoulders and why they are so hard to help.
Early on they learn that people can't be trusted. They often spend the rest of their lives embracing this damaging belief. Seeing the world through shit-coloured glasses, they are hypersensitive to every possible slight or judgement, and they believe anyone friendly or kind must have an ulterior motive.
Despite all this, wounded people desperately want and need love. But, terrified to trust, they constantly do thing to test and sabotage their relationships. This push-pull dance is well-known to anyone who's ever been close to a victim of abuse, neglect, or abandonment. Those who suffer from BPD are hypersensitive to perceived slights from others and can grow notoriously hostile when they feel dissed....
For survivors of abuse, who you trust is a matter of survival. Its black and white. There can be no apologies. There can be no gray. There are no exceptions.-Scared Selfless ~ Michelle Stevens

I took my solo and beat hell out of the skins. Then Spoof swiped at his mouth and let go with a blast and moved it up into that squeal and stopped and started playing. It was all headwork. All new to us.

New to anybody.

I saw Sonny get a look on his face, and we sat still and listened while Spoof made love to that horn.

Now like a scream, now like a laugh - now we're swinging in the trees, now the white men are coming, now we're in the boat and chains are hanging from our ankles and we're rowing, rowing - Spoof, what is it? - now we're sawing wood and picking cotton and serving up those cool cool drinks to the Colonel in his chair - Well, blow, man! - now we're free, and we're struttin' down Lenox Avenue and State & Madison and Pirate's Alley, laughing, crying - Who said free? - and we want to go back and we don't want to go back - Play it, Spoof! God, God, tell us all about it! Talk to us! - and we're sitting in a cellar with a comb wrapped up in paper, with a skin-barrel and a tinklebox - Don't stop, Spoof! Oh Lord, please don't stop! - and we're making something, something, what is it? Is it jazz? Why, yes, Lord, it's jazz. Thank you, sir, and thank you, sir, we finally got it, something that is ours, something great that belongs to us and to us alone, that we made, and that's why it's important and that's what it's all about and - Spoof! Spoof, you can;t stop now --

But it was over, middle of the trip. And there was Spoof st ~ Charles Beaumont

The white man, as one Indian said, "was in the Black Hills just like maggots";10 wasicu, or "the greedy one" (literally, "he-who-takes-the-fat"),11 was the term the Lakota used to describe the miners, and it later became their term for whites in general. "The love of possessions is a disease with them," said Sitting Bull, who was never behindhand in his contempt. ~ Peter Matthiessen

You see the Earth as a bright blue and white Christmas tree ornament in the black sky. It's so small and so fragile - you realize that on that small spot is everything that means everything to you; all of history and art and death and birth and love. ~ Rusty Schweickart

Love is like the piano there are black and white and must play both for a beautiful melody. ~ Khaled Naili

Sonnet 130
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare. ~ William Shakespeare

For Love, to which we may now return, has two faces; one white, the other black; two bodies; one smooth, the other hairy. It has two hands, two feet, two tails, two, indeed, of every member and each one is the exact opposite of the other. Yet, so strictly are they joined together that you cannot separate them. In this case, Orlando's love began her flight towards him with her white face turned, and her smooth and lovely body outwards. Nearer and nearer she came wafting before her airs of pure delight. All of a sudden (at the sight of the Archduchess presumably) she wheeled about, turned the other way round; showed herself black, hairy, brutish; and it was Lust the vulture, not Love, the Bird of Paradise that flopped, foully and disgustingly, upon his shoulders. Hence he ran; hence he fetched the footman. ~ Virginia Woolf

My flock is black, my flock is white. One has got to say to our people, "I love you. I care for you, enormously." And when I care about black liberation, it is because I care about white liberation. ~ Desmond Tutu

As social phenomena, languages are tied up in world of unequal power relations, gaining or losing status not based on technical linguistic grounds but on social judgement, biases, and stereotypes that are based on the status of their speakers. As such, we argue that white America's love-hate relationship with black modes of communication can only be interpreted within a framework that considers language a primary site of cultural contestation. It should be clear by now that it's about more than a mothafucka, right? Our analysis of Black Language forms that the dominant culture considers inflammatory, controversial, or stigmatized allows us to make several observations. First, building off what anthropologist and linguist Arthur Spears noted in his discussion of uncensored speech, Black verbal culture, like all cultures is "a complex network of predispositions, values, behaviors, expectations and routines." Language practices, in their varying sociocultural contexts, can only be understood if read within the full range of the community's speech activities, and that requires rigorous ethnographic search and analysis. Second the community's beliefs and ideas about language- it's language ideologies- should be the primary point of departure for investigation and interpretation. ~ H. Samy Alim

Parents have funny ways of showing their love sometimes. Mom says my life is all black and white right now, as a kid. But she says when I get older, become a women, that changes, and there's a lot of gray area. I think adult love is more complicated. ~ Brooklyn James

I love the order of deal making, the clarity oof language--how there is little room for interpretation and none for error. I love the black-and-white terms. ~ Rebecca Serle

What I mean is, all the terrible things that happen in fairy tales seem real. Or not real, but genuine. Life is unfair, and the bad guys keep winning and good people die. But I like how that's not always the end of it ... Evil is real, but so is good. They always say fairy tales are simplistic, black and white, but I don't think so. I think they're complicated. That's what I love about them. ~ Polly Shulman

Lord Cut-Glass, in his kitchen full of time, squats down alone to a dogdish, marked Fido, of peppery fish-scraps and listens to the voices of his sixty-six clocks, one for each year of his loony age, and watches, with love, their black-and-white moony loudlipped faces tocking the earth away: slow clocks, quick clocks, pendulumed heart-knocks, china, alarm, grandfather, cuckoo; clocks shaped like Noah's whirring Ark, clocks that bicker in marble ships, clocks in the wombs of glass women, hourglass chimers, tu-wit-tuwoo clocks, clocks that pluck tunes, Vesuvius clocks all black bells and lava, Niagara clocks that cataract their ticks, old time weeping clocks with ebony beards, clocks with no hands for ever drumming out time
without ever knowing what time it is. His sixty-six singers are all set at different hours. Lord Cut-Glass lives in a house and a life at siege. Any minute or dark day now, the unknown enemy will loot and savage downhill, but they will not catch him napping. Sixty-six different times in his fish-slimy kitchen ping, strike, tick, chime, and tock. ~ Dylan Thomas

Love and hate, black and white,
Right or wrong, who is right?
Some smoke joints to anoint their brain
To the vanishing point ... so they won't go insane. ~ Pharoahe Monch

The USPS is the only place in the world where you will find a black guy, a white guy, and a hispanic guy playing Filipino poker! And we love it that way! ~ Rhoda D'Ettore

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black. ~ Robert Kennedy

Rapture

I can feel she has got out of bed.
That means it is seven a.m.
I have been lying with eyes shut,
thinking, or possibly dreaming,
of how she might look if, at breakfast,
I spoke about the hidden place in her
which, to me, is like a soprano's tremolo,
and right then, over toast and bramble jelly,
if such things are possible, she came.
I imagine she would show it while trying to conceal it.
I imagine her hair would fall about her face
and she would become apparently downcast,
as she does at a concert when she is moved.
The hypnopompic play passes, and I open my eyes
and there she is, next to the bed,
bending to a low drawer, picking over
various small smooth black, white,
and pink items of underwear. She bends
so low her back runs parallel to the earth,
but there is no sway in it, there is little burden, the day has hardly begun.
The two mounds of muscles for walking, leaping, lovemaking,
lift toward the east - what can I say?
Simile is useless; there is nothing like them on earth.
Her breasts fall full; the nipples
are deep pink in the glare shining up through the iron bars
of the gate under the earth where those who could not love
press, wanting to be born again.
I reach out and take her wrist
and she falls back into bed and at once starts unbuttoning my pajamas.
Later, when I open my eyes, there she is again,
~ Galway Kinnell

We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization - black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion and love ... What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black. ~ Robert F. Kennedy

There was a time with his wife on this river or a river just like it, it can't be this river, but in his memory it is this one. A time on a wash just like this where he lay shirtless with her shivering in the August night, jeans pasted dark and wet to his knocking legs, his torso white to glowing in the moonlight. Her hair tendriled and framed about her face like an outlandish black tattoo. Her wet dress like a sleeve of molting skin, which of a sort it had been that whole night in their dancing. Her heart in its red and white cage knocking just inches from his own, like two young prisoners tapping out simpleton Morse I am here I am here I am here. Here I am for your pleasure for you forever. On a river like this where he impregnated her. A river promise too, he said I love you I love you. Seventeen years old. A pleasure so total that even then he knew he had mortgaged years to her and he did not care. ~ Smith Henderson

But...what makes you Nathan--what makes you so special--is that you are both White Witch and Black Witch, both dark and full of light. That's what I love about you. What I've always loved. And I love you still, Nathan, and I know I always will. But you're changing. And now...now what I fear is that you'll get the amulet and you'll hone the Gifts you took from your father. You'll be invulnerable and you'll kill more people, many, many more people. I fear you won't be able to stop and you'll lose yourself completely. And then I'll come to dread you too. ~ Sally Green

I call the high and light aspects of my being SPIRIT and the dark and heavy aspects SOUL.
Soul is at home in the deep shaded valleys.
Heavy torpid flowes saturated with black grow there.
The rivers flow like arm syrup. They empty into huge oceans of soul.
Spirit is a land of high,white peaks and glittering jewel-like lakes and flowers.
Life is sparse and sound travels great distances.
There is soul music, soul food, and soul love.
People need to climb the mountain not because it is there
But because the soulful divinity need to be mated with the Spirit.
Deep down we must have a rel affection for each other, a clear recognition of our shared human status. At the same time we must openly accept all ideologies and systems as means of solving humanity's problems. No matter how strong the wind of evil may blow, the flame of truth cannot be extinguished. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

And while thou
livest, dear Kate, take a fellow of plain and
uncoined constancy; for he perforce must do thee
right, because he hath not the gift to woo in other
places: for these fellows of infinite tongue, that
can rhyme themselves into ladies' favours, they do
always reason themselves out again. What! a
speaker is but a prater; a rhyme is but a ballad. A
good leg will fall; a straight back will stoop; a
black beard will turn white; a curled pate will grow
bald; a fair face will wither; a full eye will wax
hollow: but a good heart, Kate, is the sun and the
moon; or, rather, the sun, and not the moon; for it
shines bright and never changes, but keeps his
course truly. If thou would have such a one, take
me; and take me, take a soldier; take a soldier,
take a king. And what sayest thou then to my love?
speak, my fair, and fairly, I pray thee ~ William Shakespeare

The world is more than black and white. Seeing everything in color helps me raise my spirit and find my happy. Life is meant to be lived in color! ~ Jodi Livon

I don't know about black or white magic I just know one type and that is your magic. ~ M.F. Moonzajer

Even years from now, once I've stopped drinking, I will never stop trusting extremes. I will always believe that anything worth having is worth having in excess. The good things are worth hoarding until you have a cookie-fat ass, sex-aching loins, joy that fires through you like popping popcorn, or love, the weakness at the sight of some boy who makes your chest ache like indigestion. If it's good for you, it ought to be good for you in any amount, and you should track down every available bit of it. And if it's toxic, if it turns your liver into a hard little rock of scar tissue, or curls your memory at the edges like something burned in a fire, or makes your stomach flop, or your mind ache, or your personality contorted, you shouldn't buy into the bullshit about temperance. ~ Koren Zailckas

Following

Someone is always falling in love with you:
men and women, infants and children,
octogenarians and adolescents.
A tenant of heaven-haven on the pearly doorstep
hopes you will wave your hand in passing.
Where you stood just now a white bird
has flown into a ponderosa pine
and a black bee hovers in a bush of yellow flowers.

People would like to discuss you, but hold back.
Mystery is a fragile substance, too easy to tear.
Several persons, however, have noticed that you are followed
not by the usual shadow but by a shaft of sunlight.
Even on a day of fog or light rain.
Even after sunset.

When you are not present, you still walk quietly
through our minds, and we tell ourselves little stories
or small poems about you, like this one.
When a bird sings, we listen carefully
hoping your name will be mentioned. ~ Virginia Adair

I love playing all kinds of roles. I hope it doesn't sound too pretentious, but I always feel human nature is like a piano, and there are 88 keys, and there are some white keys and some black keys, and each character is a different chord on the piano. Basically, I hope that in the course of my life, I will have played all 88 keys. So, I'll have played heroes and villains and princes and kings and warriors and beggars and thieves and lovers and fathers and wizards and all of those things. That is why I'm an actor ... I love studying people. ~ Tom Hiddleston

Love is not black and white. It's not even gray. Love is every shade of color in the spectrum, changing with every ray of light given and stolen. ~ Cassia Leo

As we prepared for sleep that night I noticed that Lisa was staring at her reflection in the mirror. She looked as young now as the day I met her, no grey upon her jet black hair, face always pale, she rarely sun bathed, dark glittering eyes and finally pearly white teeth. What a woman, always passionate about her affairs and always interested in my work. Shame her family could not attend our wedding. I suppose that is the hazard of marrying a Slav, either the family is dead, scattered or too poor to fly to England. Still it was a happy wedding, a quiet one with a few friends from work.

Lisa crawled into bed beside me; her body, always cold, quickly warmed to my touch. Why are women always cold when they first get into bed? We kissed for what seemed an age, caressing each other's bodies until at last she pushed me onto my back, straddled me and smiled looking down into my eyes. She licked her lips and slowly leant forward.

The next morning I checked my neck for any tell-tale signs of our love making. Again Lisa had bitten every inch of my body and left not a mark. I smiled down at her sleeping form, kissed her cheek and went to my study. I had term papers to mark and research for my next set of lectures.

Lisa came into my study just after lunch. For a woman just out of bed she looked remarkably well, her hair was untangled, her cheeks full in bloom, there were no signs of tiredness in her eyes at all.

I smiled at her as we kissed, t ~ E.A.Drake

Beneath the surface level of conditioned thinking in every one of us there is a single living spirit. The still small voice whispering to me in the depths of my consciousness is saying exactly the same thing as the voice whispering to you in your consciousness. 'I want an earth that is healthy, a world at peace, and a heart filled with love.' It doesn't matter if your skin is brown or white or black, or whether you speak English, Japanese, or Malayalam - the voice, says the Gita, is the same in every creature, and it comes from your true self. ~ Eknath Easwaran

Well, the black man has functioned in the white man's world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar: and as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundations. You, don't be afraid. I said that it was intended that you should perish in the ghetto, perish by never being allowed to go behind the white man's definitions, by never being allowed to spell your proper name. You have, and many of us have, defeated this intention; and, by a terrible law, a terrible paradox, those innocents who believed that your imprisonment made them safe are losing their grasp of reality. But these men are your brothers - your lost, younger brothers. And if the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it. For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what America must become. It will be hard, James, but you come from sturdy, peasant stock, men who picked cotton and damned rivers and built railroads, and, in the teeth of the most terrifying odds, achieved an unassailable and monumental dignity. You come from a long line of great poets, some of the greatest poets since Homer. One of them said, The very time I thought I was lost, My dungeon shook and my chains fell off. ~ James Baldwin

Pessimism is a towering skyscraper eighty stories high in the suburbs of the soul at the end of a long avenue with waste ground on either side and a few poorly-stocked little shops. Several ultra-fast staircases give access to the building, running up from the cellars to the roof-gardens. The comfort of this place leaves nothing to be desired and only the greatest luxury is acceptable, but every Friday the residents gather on the ground floor to read from a bible bound in the skin of a blind man. The psalmic words they intone rise up through the pipes, sigh in the stoves and sweep the chimneys coated inside with black grease which leaves dirt on the skin. Water runs constantly in the bathrooms and the showers beat down on the numbered bodies, peppering them with sand. On Sundays the bed linen unrolls by itself and nobody makes love. For this tower block, like an obscure phallus scraping the vulva of the sky, is usually a hive of sexual activity. The most beautiful woman lives there, but no-one has ever known her. It is said, that dressed in furs and feathers, she keeps herself shut away in a first-floor apartment as if in a white safe. Her windows are scissors which cut short both shadow and breath. Her name is AURORA. ~ Michel Leiris

Poetry contains few words but tells much. Its beauty is that by being condensed it is rich in meaning and open to various interpretations. Unlike prose, there is no boundary to poetry. There is nothing concrete or black and white. Poetry is mutable; it is transformative. Poetry is the alchemy of hearts. And what cannot be said in prose can sometimes be only said through poetry. ~ Salil Jha

As far as I'm concerned, and this is a big theme of mine, I'm not interested in white people loving me. It's an unrealistic expectation. Black people don't love anybody but themselves. ~ John McWhorter

Someone once told me that when you die every deed you ever committed, whether on behalf of good or bad is represented in the form of pebbles. Black ones for every deed done in the name of evil, white ones for every act of good. The pebbles are weighed upon a great scale, and if the white stones outweigh the black then your soul is granted peace."
He opens one bleary eye. "What's the punishment for too many black acts?"
"There is no worse punishment than standing on the threshold of heaven alone. ~ Ellis Adler

I think the play offers (white Americans) a different way to look at black Americans For instance, in 'Fences' they see a garbageman, a person they don't really look at, although they see a garbageman every day. By looking at Troy's life, white people find out that the content of this black garbageman's life is affected by the same things- love, honor, beauty, betrayal, duty. Recognizing that these things are as much part of his life as theirs can affect how they think about and deal with black people in their lives. ~ August Wilson

Love is like a game of chess. You're white. He's black. You wait for him to make a move, while staring into his handsome, melting-you-on-the-inside eyes, then realize what a dummy he is to not tell you straight out to go first. The beginning is the crush stage. You begin to realize how much you want to defeat him, or make him fall in love with you. By the time you get to the heat of the game, you both moved and are hopefully dating. If you haven't forfeit then because you don't want to be cheated on, you make another move- head on shoulder, hand holding, etc. Black makes another move-he gives you his jacket on a freezing night. By the endgame, he either realizes how stupid he was to play with you and forfeits, or he realizes how smart you are and lets you defeat him (and love you). By the time you win, you're married to him. A happily ever after game of chess. ~ Amrita Ramanathan

Black and white, good and evil, is just a way to simplify life and make it easier for people to deal with. People love it too; that's why so many people go to church on a Sunday. ~ Neil Walker

My hope is that the white and the black will be united in perfect love and fellowship, with complete unity and brotherhood. Associate with each other, think of each other, and be like a rose garden. Anyone who goes into a rose garden will see various roses, white, pink, yellow, red, all growing together and replete with adornment. Each one accentuates the beauty of the other. Were all of one color, the garden would be monotonous to the eye. If they were all white or yellow or red, the garden would lack variety and attractiveness; but when the colors are varied, white, pink, yellow, red, there will be the greatest beauty. ~ Abdu'l- Baha

It rarely snows because Antarctica is a desert. An iceberg means it's tens of millions of years old and has calved from a glacier. (This is why you must love life: one day you're offering up your social security number to the Russia Mafia; two weeks later you're using the word calve as a verb.) I saw hundreds of them, cathedrals of ice, rubbed like salt licks; shipwrecks, polished from wear like marble steps at the Vatican; Lincoln Centers capsized and pockmarked; airplane hangars carved by Louise Nevelson; thirty-story buildings, impossibly arched like out of a world's fair; white, yes, but blue, too, every blue on the color wheel, deep like a navy blazer, incandescent like a neon sign, royal like a Frenchman's shirt, powder like Peter Rabbit's cloth coat, these icy monsters roaming the forbidding black. ~ Maria Semple

Do you want to make the dream come true?
Do you want to make the dream come true?
These five ways for you! I am Sajal Ahmed and I love to dreams, and tell you-
Keep dreaming. Never forget to dream, after you can make your dreams come true. Yes its not false! You can also fulfill your dreams. How to know?
Friend but let's go-

1) Keep dreaming. Look like a good, bad, black and white dreams. Friends remember that, these are the bad, good, bright and dark dreams of your whole life.

2) You never think of yourself as a little. Yes friend, Do not think you're too little. If you think of yourself as s a little, you are lost! What did Sajal Ahmed say? Why he smiling? Do not worry about this.
Never tell anyone about your dreams. Perhaps they will laugh or think your dream will be trivial. When they smile, you start thinking trivial about your own dream. Can not move forward......
Remember friend god has given you the power to endure. Come on yourself as you say. Those who laugh at you, leave piss in their mouth and Keep your dreams in yourself. If you want to make it true, you will have to keep it in yourself until it is successful. Those who saw you one day laugh, they will be jealous of you one day.

3) Do not think of my dream sometimes small. Never think your dreams worthless. Remember, everyone can not see dream, dream is a great gift of God! If you've see dream you will feel lucky. Because the dream is like a revelati ~ Sajal Ahmed

STARS

Here in my head, language
keeps making its tiny noises.

How can I hope to be friends
with the hard white stars

whose flaring ad hissing are not speech
but a pure radiance?

How can I hope to be friends
with the yawning spaces between them

where nothing, ever, is spoken?
Tonight, at the edge of the field,

I stood up very still, and looked up,
and tried to be empty of words.

What joy was it, that almost found me?
What amiable peace?

Then it was over, the wind
roused up in the oak trees behind me

and I fell back, easily.
Earth has a hundred thousand pure contraltos-

even the distant night bird
as it talks threat, as it talks love

over the cold, black fields.
Once, deep in the woods,

I found the skull of a bear
and it was utterly silent-

and once a river otter, in a steel trap,
and it too was utterly silent.

What can we do
but keep breathing in and out,

modest and willing, and in our places?
Listen, listen, I'm forever saying,

Listen to the river, to the hawk, to the hoof,
to the mockingbird, to the jack-in-the-pulpit-

then I come up with a few words, like a gift.
Even as now.

Even as the darkness has remained the pure, deep darkness.
Even as the stars have ~ Mary Oliver

I see love in black and white. Passion in shades of "gris". But when it comes to you and I, color is all I see. ~ Lady Gaga

The love for equals is a human thing
of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles. The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing
the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world. The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing
to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man. The world is always bewildered by its saints. And then there is the love for the enemy
love for the one who does not love you but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured's love for the torturer. This is God's love. It conquers the world. ~ Frederick Buechner

Armenian Cognac

A bottle of cognac from Yerevan
is on my kitchen table
as closed as that history
and as silent
If I broke it down I'd lose a hundred years
of love
and if I opened it the ancestors
hanging here in black and white
would come down from the walls
to have a glass with me
I know a history that's been forgotten
and I know why that bottle of cognac
stands with such singular pride....

If I broke it now I'd lose a hundred years
of my people's history ~ Najwan Darwish

I am not light nor the absence of it. I am the broad spectrum. Everything that makes you think, want to touch, or taste. Don't box me into that life that you so desperately need to be black and white because that's not me; I won't fit. I am bold, brilliant, and beautiful, I will sparkle and shimmer every hue. Ever changing. Undefinable. So do not give me limits or make me try to fit. There is no containing subtle softness careening into the harsh and dominant, every faucet creating a reaction which will cause you to feel and know you are alive. - Kendal Waller ~ Kendal Waller

The people in their overwhelming majority are so feminine by nature and attitude that sober reasoning determines their thoughts and actions far less than emotion and feeling.

And this sentiment is not complicated, but very simple and all of a piece. It does not have multiple shadings; it has a positive and a negative; love or hate, right or wrong, truth or lie, never half this way and half that way, never partially, or that kind of thing. ~ Adolf Hitler

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good. ~ W. H. Auden

Girls, be good to these spirits of music and poetry
that breast your threshold with their scented gifts.
Lift the lyre, clear and sweet, they leave with you.
As for me, this body is now so arthritic
I cannot play, hardly even hold the instrument.
Can you believe my white hair was once black?
And oh, the soul grows heavy with the body.
Complaining knee-joints creak at every move.
To think I danced as delicate as a deer!
Some gloomy poems came from these thoughts:
useless: we are all born to lose life,
and what is worse, girls, to lose youth.
The legend of the goddess of the dawn
I'm sure you know: how rosy Eos
madly in love with gorgeous young Tithonus
swept him like booty to her hiding-place
but then forgot he would grow old and grey
while she in despair pursued her immortal way. ~ Sappho

Nothing is ever black and white, Nila. You should know that bu now. Its all how you survive the grey." -Kes ~ Pepper Winters

Then, as if getting blown up is not enough to worry about, after I take a seat on the steps, I get a look at the choir. Thirty singers and from where I'm sitting, it looks like only two of them are black. It's not like I'm saying suburban white people shouldn't sing. Because I love Van Halen's Hot for Teacher. ~ Sarah Vowell

--and then you're in serious trouble, very serious trouble, and you know it, finally, deadly serious trouble, because this Substance you thought was your one true friend, that you gave up all for, gladly, that for so long gave you relief from the pain of the Losses your love of that relief caused, your mother and lover and god and compadre, has finally removed its smily-face mask to reveal centerless eyes and a ravening maw, and canines down to here, it's the Face In The Floor, the grinning root-white face of your worst nightmares, and the face is your own face in the mirror, now, it's you, the Substance has devoured or replaced and become you, and the puke-, drool- and Substance-crusted T-shirt you've both worn for weeks now gets torn off and you stand there looking and in the root-white chest where your heart (given away to It) should be beating, in its exposed chest's center and centerless eyes is just a lightless hole, more teeth, and a beckoning taloned hand dangling something irresistible, and now you see you've been had, screwed royal, stripped and fucked and tossed to the side like some stuffed toy to lie for all time in the posture you land in. You see now that It's your enemy and your worst personal nightmare and the trouble It's gotten you into is undeniable and you still can't stop. Doing the Substance now is like attending Black Mass but you still can't stop, even though the Substance no longer gets you high. You are, as they say, Finished. You cannot get drunk a ~ David Foster Wallace

In an instant, five harlequin-like clowns emerged and began to perform all kinds of acrobatic tricks, encircling us––correction...corralling us. They were graceful but a little creepy too. They were wearing black and white costumes that were form fitting and appeared to move like some psychedelic drug trip when they flipped around. That of course was odd, but not nearly as odd as the chant they were singing as they continued to perform their tricks.
See us dance.
Watch us flip.
Care to take a chance?
We'll only need a sip.
Come to see our mistress?
Or come to see our master?
She can be quite viscous.
But he is a disaster.
We love them both, and we'll let you choose.
Either way, we wouldn't want to be in your shoes. ~ Brynn Myers

My characters push the limits of the envelope when it comes to passion, love, and lust. They can be as elegant and distinguished as Lizzie's Darcy, or as wild and unrelenting as Cathy's Heathcliff; sometimes all in one bold personality. I also believe there is a wider universal mosaic on our planet than mere black and white. My contemporary healer/surgeon in the novel 'Hobble' is half Native American (Mayan Mexican + Peruvian, plus Scottish) and his lover is African American (African + European + American Indian). My people see the world differently; they're often mixed race or of a race, color, or nationality not normally associated with nor depicted in romantic and erotic novels or films as central, positively sexual, and realistic. ~ Neale Sourna

Where are we - " Kyungsoo yelps as Jongin practically throws him over the window pane of a filthy-rich looking convertible, a treacherous little thing parked up against the curb, all black exteriors and plush white interiors, not even bothering to open the door, "going?"
"To see fireflies," Jongin says muffling coughs in his sleeves, and it's only when Kyungsoo buckles up and looks over does he realize that the boy is grinning from ear to ear, "Real ones. ~ Changdictator

Now, tell me again why I'm freezing my ass off in the middle of the woods?"
Legna chuckled.
"Because it is tradition. Your mate must find you and then carry you to the altar. Seeking you out is symbolic of his desire to let nothing come between you. Bringing you to the altar is a reflection of how it is his duty to help you over obstacles so that you may reach moments of joy together."
"It's very romantic," Isabella said, "if a little chauvinistic."
"Not in the least. The sharing of responsibility within a joining is symbolized just as strongly. The bride must tie the handfasting ribbon around her mate's wrist. The white ribbon symbolizes honesty and love and fidelity, and by allowing himself to be so tied means the groom must provide for her at all times, as she will provide for him. The black is a promise that they will forever do all in their power to protect their union, their children, and the perpetuation of the essentials of our culture."
"But you've tied a red ribbon to the end of the black, Legna. What does thatmean?"
"Actually" - the Demon woman smiled - "there is no precedent for the red ribbon. However, I felt it only fair to have a physical reminder that you have a culture of your own and will have just as much right to perpetuate that within your children as Jacob does."
"Legna," Isabella giggled, giving her an admonishing look, "that is positively rebellious and feminist of you."
"I never claimed to be an old-fashioned gi ~ Jacquelyn Frank

My Floating Sea"

"Pastel colors reflect in my opening eyes and draw my gaze to a horizon where the waters both begin and end. This early in the day I can easily stare without blinking. The pale sea appears calm, but it is stormy just as often. I awe at the grandeur, how it expands beyond my sight to immeasurable depths. In every direction that I twist my neck, a beauteous blue is there to console me.

Flowing, floating ribbons of mist form on these pale waters. In harmony they pirouette, creating a stretch of attractive, soft swirls. Swoosh! The wind, its strength in eddies and twisters, smears the art of dancing clouds, and the white disperses like startled fairies fleeing into the forest. Suddenly all is brilliant blue.

The waters calm and clear. It warms me. Pleases me. Forces my eyes to close at such vast radiance. My day is spent surrounded by this ethereal sea, but soon enough the light in its belly subsides. Rich colors draw my gaze to the opposite horizon where the waters both begin and end. I watch the colors bleed and deepen. They fade into black.

Yawning, I cast my eyes at tiny gleams of life that drift within the darkened waters. I extend my reach as if I could will my arm to stretch the expanse between me and eons. How I would love to brush a finger over a ray of living light, but I know I cannot.

Distance deceives me.

These little breathing lights floating in blackness would truly reduce me to ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

What is a colour when death comes to call upon the black man and also pays a visit to his neighbour who is white? Can either by his hue keep alive his mortal soul? What is a colour? ~ Eugenie Laverne Mitchell

If God is the Creator, if God englobes every single thing in the universe, then God is everything, and everything is God. God is the earth and the sky, and the tree planted in the earth under the sky, and the bird in the tree, and the worm in the beak of the bird, and the dirt in the stomach of the worm. God is He and She, straight and gay, black and white and red - yes even that ... and green and blue and all the rest. And so, to despise me for loving women or you for being a Red who made love with a woman, would be to despise not only His own creations but also to hate Himself. My God is not so stupid as that. ~ Hillary Jordan

The love I have for our wildlife is so great, it fills my world. After Black Saturday I saw a world that was black and white, void of animals and humans. What I missed most was the love and life of living with the wildlife. Each day I think of the ones gone and there is a deep hole in my heart. I did not miss the humans or the sounds they make, I missed the animals the sounds of peace and love that came from them. Such beauty and harmony with nature, only animals can be that smart. ~ Stella Reid

We black women must forgive black men for not protecting us against slavery, racism, white men, our confusion, their doubts. And black men must forgive black women for our own sometimes dubious choices, divided loyalties, and lack of belief in their possibilities. Only when our sons and our daughters know that forgiveness is real, existent, and that those who love them practice it, can they form bonds as men and women that really can save and change our community. ~ Marita Golden

Coral, my love, you are too pure, too innocent, too alive for me,"
he said slowly, almost carefully. "My world is like a drawing in black
and white on a gray canvas, without a single note of color to bring it
to life. And now, on this pale and melancholic picture, a red flower
has fallen, a warm and scented flower." He sighed. "It's a wonderful
contrast, but too vivid ... ~ Hannah Fielding

We all have demons inside us, Nick. The Tsalagi have an old saying - every heart holds two wolves. One is the white wolf, who is made up of love, kindness, respect, decency, compassion, and all the things that are good in life. The black wolf is born of jealousy, hatred, pettiness, prejudice, vindictiveness, and all the poisons of the human personality. The two constantly war with each other for dominance. And one day, one wolf will overtake and devour the other. - Acheron ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Meanwhile, someplace in the world, somebody is making love and another a poem. Elsewhere in the universe, a star manyfold the mass of our third-rate sun is living out its final moments in a wild spin before collapsing into a black hole, its exhale bending spacetime itself into a well of nothingness that can swallow every atom that ever touched us and every datum we ever produced, every poem and statue and symphony we've ever known - an entropic spectacle insentient to questions of blame and mercy, devoid of why.
"In four billion years, our own star will follow its fate, collapsing into a white dwarf. We exist only by chance, after all. The Voyager will still be sailing into the interstellar shorelessness on the wings of the "heavenly breezes" Kepler had once imagined, carrying Beethoven on a golden disc crafted by a symphonic civilization that long ago made love and war and mathematics on a distant blue dot.
But until that day comes, nothing once created ever fully leaves us. Seeds are planted and come abloom generations, centuries, civilizations later, migrating across coteries and countries and continents. Meanwhile, people live and people die - in peace as war rages on, in poverty and disrepute as latent fame awaits, with much that never meets its more, in shipwrecked love.
I will die.
You will die.
The atoms that huddled for a cosmic blink around the shadow of a self will return to the seas that made us.
What will survive of us are shoreless ~ Maria Popova

The foundation of all human knowledge, the beginning of human consciousness, must be that each and every one of us is an object of love. Before you know if you have red hair or brown, before you know if you are black or white, before you know of what religion you are a part, you have to know that you are loved ~ Michael Jackson

Q: Why is it we all so desperately want to be loved?
Krishnamurti: Because we are so desperately empty, lonely.

Q: But you say that loving is more important than being loved.
Krishnamurti: Yes, of course – which means one must understand this emptiness, this loneliness in oneself. A mind that is self-concerned with its own ambitions, greeds, fears, guilt, suffering has no capacity to love. A mind that is divided in itself, that lives in fragments, obviously cannot love. Division implies sorrow; it is the root cause of sorrow – division between 'you' and 'me', 'we' and 'they', the black, the white, the brown and so on. So wherever there is division, fragmentation, love cannot be, because goodness is a state of non-division. The world itself is indivisible. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

One aspect of my mum's personality that has influenced me is her love of Hollywood and the golden era of black-and-white films. ~ Rebecca Hall

I don't see in black or white. I see in the color of humanity which is the rainbow of harmony. In that spirit there is only good and evil, peace or war, love or hate and happiness or discontent. ~ Timothy Pina

You think love is black and white. All women think that. And they're wrong. Women are really intelligent except for when they're being really stupid. ~ Liane Moriarty

The perceived wisdom is that people do not go in large numbers to black-and-white movies anymore - which is a great shame, but I'd love to make a black-and-white movie one day. ~ Sam Mendes

Even if you believe the Genesis record of creation you'll see that God did not create a black and white world of male and female. Creation is not black and white, it is amazingly diverse, like a rainbow, including sexualities and a variety of non-heterosexual expressions of behaviour, affection and partnering occurring in most species, including humans. The ability to reproduce is only a small part of the creation. Before God created male and female he made an even more important statement; 'it is not good for mankind to be alone'. This is fundamental to all heterosexual and same-sex relationships. Lasting relationships are based on love, trust and commitment, not sex or reproduction. So stop with the 'God created Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve' quote already. It's boring and an insult to the creator of this incredible universe. ~ Anthony Venn-Brown

Creativity is alive
And thriving in my body.
The energy you bring out in me
Is within me infinitely.
My power is overflowing.
My lips are soft and welcoming
To the exhale,
The new Braille,
The silence that persists
After our moans die away,
I look at myself and say,
"Root down so you can burn.
Beautiful girl, it's your turn
To create magic within yourself.
This time, without his help.
Find your roots and find your fire,
Be mindful of what you desire,
Persist in what you know is true,
Stay focused on the endless route
Toward your own potential.
Allow the existential
Void to swallow you whole.
Take on your old role:
The lone seeker.
Become quieter.
Become meeker.
Become the beauty that you seek.
Embody strength if you feel weak.
Find love within the walls
Of this sacred temple.
Let yourself shake and tremble,
But keep your eyes ever fixed
On the horizon
Where it's rising,
No revising,
Fears capsizing
As you sail, sail, sail
Toward the wail
Of your siren spirit
Beckoning you to bloom
The flower in your womb,
The seed of creativity,
Your triumphant legacy."
These words, I will carry
Within me as I bury
Grains of wisdom
In the whispers of the wind.
And when I arrive
To the altar of our origin,
I'll be dressed in white and black,
A ~ Vironika Tugaleva

The truth is all around you, plain to behold. The night is dark and full of terrors, the day bright and beautiful and full of hope. One is black, the other white. There is ice and there is fire. Hate and love. Bitter and sweet. Male and female. Pain and pleasure. Winter and summer. Evil and good. Death and life. Everywhere, opposites. ~ George R R Martin

Children, who made your skin white? Was it not God? Who made mine black? Was it not the same God? Am I to blame, therefore, because my skin is black?...Does not God love coloured children as well as white children? And did not the same Saviour die to save the one as well as the other? ~ Sojourner Truth

Acceptance is the most beautiful word in any language; this beautiful concept can only exist when you allow other people to be who they are and do not imprison them with your definition of what is right, proper, correct, or other limiting criteria. Decreasing the black and white in your thinking allows for an expansive area of gray, allowing you to live your life and others to live there life. Acceptance sets us all free! This simple change of thought creates a wonderful space for happiness to thrive. ~ David W. Earle

SPRING Somewhere a black bear has just risen from sleep and is staring down the mountain. All night in the brisk and shallow restlessness of early spring I think of her, her four black fists flicking the gravel, her tongue like a red fire touching the grass, the cold water. There is only one question: how to love this world. I think of her rising like a black and leafy ledge to sharpen her claws against the silence of the trees. Whatever else my life is with its poems and its music and its glass cities, it is also this dazzling darkness coming down the mountain, breathing and tasting; all day I think of her - her white teeth, her wordlessness, her perfect love. ~ Mary Oliver

The only reason you say that race was not an issue is because you wish it was not. We all wish it was not. But it's a lie. I came from a country where race was not an issue; I did not think of myself as black and I only became black when I came to America. When you are black and fall in love with a white person, race doesn't matter when you're alone together because it's just you and your love. But the minute you step outside, race matters. But we don't talk about it. We don't even tell our white partners the small things that piss us off and the things we wish they understood better, because we're worried they will say we're overreacting, or we're being too sensitive. And we don't want them to say, Look how far we've come, just forty years ago it would have been illegal for us to even be a couple blah blah blah, because you know what we're thinking when they say that? We're thinking why the fuck should it ever have been illegal anyway? But we don't say any of this stuff. We let it pile up inside our heads and when we come to nice liberal dinners like this, we say that race doesn't matter because that's what we're supposed to say, to keep our nice liberal friends comfortable. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Speaking of cold...
I shiver. "Has the temperature dropped, or is it just me?"
"Here." Etienne unwraps the black scarf that had been tied loosely around his neck,and hands it to me. I take it, gently, and wrap it around mine. It makes me dizzy.It smells like freshly scrubbed boy. It smells like him.
"Your hair looks nice," he says. "You bleached it again.
I touch the stripe self-consciously. "Mom helped me."
"That breeze is wicked,I'm going for coffee." Josh snaps his sketchbook closed. I'd forgotten he was here again. "You coming?"
Etienne looks at me, waiting to see how I answer.
Coffee! I'm dying for a real cup. I smile at Josh. "Sounds perfect."
And then I'm heading down the steps of the Pantheon, cool and white and glittering, in the most beautiful city in the world. I'm with two attractive, intelligent,funny boys and I'm grinning ear to ear. If Bridgette could see me now.
I mean,who needs Christopher when Etienne St. Clair is in the world?
But as soon as I think of Toph, I get that same stomach churching I always do when I think about him now.Shame that I ever thought he might wait. That I wasted so much time on him. Ahead of mine,Etienne laughs at something Josh said. And the sound sends me spiraling into panic as the information hits me again and again and again.
What am I going to do? I'm in love with my new best friend. ~ Stephanie Perkins

Today the danger of the pro-life position, which I vigorously support, is that it can be frighteningly selective. The rights of the unborn and the dignity of the age-worn are pieces of the same pro-life fabric. We weep at the unjustified destruction of the unborn. Did we also weep when the evening news reported from Arkansas that a black family had been shotgunned out of a white neighborhood.
When we laud life and blast abortionists, our credibility as Christians is questionable. On one hand we proclaim the love and anguish, the pain and joy that goes into fashioning a single child. We proclaim how precious each life is to God and should be to us. On the other hand, when it is the enemy that shrieks to heaven with his flesh in flames, we do not weep, we are not shamed; we call for more ~ Brennan Manning

They have invented a phrase, a phrase that is a black and white contradiction in two words - 'free-love' - as if a lover ever had been, or ever could be, free. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

Yet, if I were to adhere to my mom's advice, I would have had to drop out of school years ago (since a lot of folks in our inequitable education system refuse to love us), quit engaging public health offices (because I walked in as a human in need of medical services and walked out as a patient whose subjective world was mad invisible by research lingo: "MSM," otherwise known as "men who have sex with men'), sleep in my bed all damn day (knowing it is more likely that I would be stopped by police when walking to the store in Camden or Bed-Stuy while rocking a fitted cap and carrying books than my white male neighbors would be while walking around in ski masks in the middle of summer and dropping a dime bag on the ground in front of a walking police and his dog)... ~ Kiese Laymon

Anna's attention was focused on a single patient. Ariadne Bridgestock lay quietly against the white pillows. Her eyes were shut, and her rich brown skin was ashen, stretching tightly over the branching black veins beneath her skin.
Anna slipped in between the screens surrounding Ariadne's cot, and Cordelia followed, feeling slightly awkward. Was she intruding? But Anna looked up, as if to assure herself that Cordelia was there, before she knelt down at the side of Ariadne's bed, laying her walking stick on the floor.
Anna's bowed shoulders looked strangely vulnerable. One of her hands dangled at her side: she reached out the other, fingers moving slowly across the white linen sheets, until she was almost touching Ariadne's hand.
She did not take it. At the last moment, Anna's fingers curled and dropped to rest, beside Ariadne but not quite touching. In a low and steady voice, Anna said, "Ariadne. When you wake up - and you will wake up - I want you to remember this. It was never a sign of your worth that Charles Fairchild wanted to marry you. It is a measure of his lack of worth that he chose to break it off in such a manner."
"He broke it off?" Cordelia whispered. She was stunned. The breaking off of a promised engagement was a serious matter, undertaken usually only when one of the parties in question had committed some kind of serious crime or been caught in an affair. For Charles to break his promise to Ariadne while she lay unconscious was appalling. ~ Cassandra Clare

The American revolution, the terms are these: not that I drive you out or that you drive me out, but that we come together and embrace and learn to live together. That is the only way that we can have achieved the American revolution.
Now, if we can face this, it involves facing a great many things. It demands that white people face the fact that I, for example, or any black person they will ever meet or have ever met - I am not an exotic rarity. I am not a stranger. I am none of those things. On the contrary, for all you know, for all you know, I might be your uncle, your brother, your cousin, among other things. One of the things that has happened here - and the pathology of the Deep South proves it; so does the pathology of the North, which dictates to them that they move out and I move in - among other things which have to be excavated here is the fact that this long history is also the history of a love affair. ~ James Baldwin

I love being white. Seriously, I really do. If you're not white, your missing out. 'Cuz this shit is thoroughly good. Let me clear this up by the way: I'm not saying white people are better. I'm saying that BEING white is clearly better. Who could even argue? If it was an option I would re-up every year! 'Oh yeah, I'll take white again. Absolutely.' Here's how great it is to be white: if I would have a time machine I could go to any time and it would be awesome when I get there! That is exclusively a white privilege! Black people can't fuck with time machines! . ~ Louis C.K.

It is well known that women carry poison in their pockets. Did you expect a gun? A woman with a gun would be just another policeman. We fall in love with the convicts, remember that. Policemen marry girls from the neighborhood, high school looms over their unions, the first uniform is her prom dress and his black bow tie and white shirt. But the girls are thinking of poison, thinking of poison as the lights go out on the dresser where the revolver has been placed with care for the night. The black shoes, the fine, thick serge of the coat, shoulders and thighs of stallions. And the policemen are usually shot down by someone out of shape, thin, thin, nothing but living bones. Remember that. ~ Elizabeth Hardwick

Whether one is rich or poor, educated or illiterate, religious or nonbelieving, man or woman, black, white, or brown, we are all the same. Physically, emotionally, and mentally, we are all equal. We all share basic needs for food, shelter, safety, and love. We all aspire to happiness and we all shun suffering. Each of us has hopes, worries, fears, and dreams. Each of us wants the best for our family and loved ones. We all experience pain when we suffer loss and joy when we achieve what we seek. On this fundamental level, religion, ethnicity, culture, and language make no difference. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

I look at Woody Allen's prolific career of 30 or 40 films, and I'm watching the clock. I'd love to work at a clip of a film a year. We don't get the benefit of the doubt, particularly black women. We're presumed incompetent, whereas a white male is assumed competent until proven otherwise. They just think the guy in the ball hat and the T-shirt over the thermal has got it, whether he's got it or not. For buzzy first films by a white male, the trajectory is a 90-degree angle. For us, it's a 30-degree angle. ~ Dee Rees