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" As an African-American, we stand on the shoulders of people who fought despite not seeing victories in their lifetime or even in their children's lifetime or even in their grandchildren's lifetime. So fatalism isn't really an option. "

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" I don't want them to read what I'm writing and say, 'I think that's right,' and agree with me. I want them to read something and then walk away and be haunted by it. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Writing

Want

" I think 'Dear White People,' the show, is a tremendous artistic achievement. It's always hinting that there is something beyond the pleading and wokeness, something that the show's more militant characters can't see. "

" My job is to look out on that world that I write about and be as honest as I possibly can about that world. If that's optimistic and uplifting, OK. If it's not, OK. "

" From last century's 'The Birth of a Nation' to this century's 'Gods and Generals,' Hollywood has likely done more than any other American institution to obstruct a truthful apprehension of the Civil War and, thus, modern America's very origins. "

" I think the body is the ultimate thing. The soul and mind are part of the body. I don't think there is anything outside of that. Your physical self is who you are. Some people feel that that is reductionist, but I don't think it is. It's just true. "

" I started writing regularly for 'The Atlantic' roughly around the time that Barack Obama got inaugurated. "

" As a writer, I was shaped by a desire to write for black people. That things were not being represented. That was my motivating force. That it has become what it has become is shocking to me. I just wanted to be able to take care of my kids. "

" To be black in the Baltimore of my youth was to be naked before the elements of the world. "

" If you are attempting to study American history, and you don't understand the force of white supremacy, you fundamentally misunderstand America. "

" I have never read 'To Kill A Mockingbird.' "

" In the 1930s and the 1940s, we set up the FHA. We set up the Home Owners' Loan Corporation. We set up specific bureaus to make our communities look the way they look. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Home

Loan

" I was 24 when Samori was born. His mom was 23. "

" I think it's really important to be conscious of yourself and the world around you. For me, that meant reading a lot and reporting. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Yourself

Reading

" I do understand how hate eats at the soul and how to purge yourself of hate. "

" You may not be able to change the course of government, but you can achieve some peace. And books were the path to that. I grew up in a house where books were everywhere. "

" I didn't start off as a journalist; I started off as a poet. My ambition was to practise poetry. Then I found journalism, but that other voice never fled from me. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Start

Ambition

" My father was so very afraid. I felt it in the sting of his black leather belt, which he applied with more anxiety than anger, my father who beat me as if someone might steal me away, because that was exactly what was happening all around us. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Black

" There are African-American families around this country - a large, large number of African-American families - that operate out of complete fear that their kids are going to be taken from them and will do anything to prevent that. "

" We want to believe racism is an artifact of the past, and if you have a political massacre, that contradicts that. "

" You don't make a case for reparations thinking, 'Oh yeah, people are gonna love this.' I didn't see that coming. "

" One of the things that's really, really present in 'Between the World and Me' is, I am in some ways outside of the African-American tradition. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Tradition

Present

" For nearly a century and a half, this country deluded itself into thinking that its greatest calamity, the Civil War, had nothing to do with one of its greatest sins, enslavement. It deluded itself in this manner despite available evidence to the contrary. "

" One can say Senator Sanders should have more explicit antiracist policy within his racial justice platform, not just more general stuff, and still cast a vote for Senator Sanders and still feel that Senator Sanders is the best option that we have in the race. "

" When people who are not black are interested in what I do, frankly, I'm always surprised. I don't know if it's my low expectations for white people or what. "

" When I grew up in West Baltimore, anything associated - and I'm talking about my childhood - with white people 99 percent of the time was something malevolent, like it was an explanatory force for something bad. "

" I think Barack Obama was born into a home not just to a white woman and white grandparents, but a white woman and white grandparents who shockingly told him it was okay that he was black and that he should not be ashamed of it and that he should, in fact, be proud of it. "

" I feel some need to represent where I'm from. But ultimately, I think my only real responsibility is to - as much as possible - interrogate my own truths. This is to say not merely writing what I think is true, but using the writing to turn that alleged truth over and over, to stress-test it, in the aim of producing something readable. "

" My chief identity, to my mind, was not 'writer' but 'college dropout.' "

" The country in which reparations actually happen is a very different one than the one we live in. "

" I enjoy the challenge of trying to say things beautifully. The message is secondary in that sense. Obviously, I have something that I want to say that's very, very important to me - but the process of actually crafting it is essential. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Process

Enjoy