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" Everybody thinks that an important book has to be a big, long book. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

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" It's kind of selfish to say that you're only going to fight for a victory that you will live to see. "

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" 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. "

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" Life is always a problem. The fact that I'm on the radio saying that I don't necessarily see hope does not relieve people, does not relieve my son, does not relieve children, of the responsibility to struggle. "

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" When people think about reparations, they immediately think about people who've been dead for 100 years. "

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" I constantly write about my safety walking to and from school, and then I would come home at night, and I would cut on the TV, and I would watch a show like 'The Wonder Years,' or I would watch, you know, some other show like 'Family Ties.' "

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" There's no way to understand housing as it exists today without federal policy. "

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" I had no expectations of white people at all. "

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" When you write, you're inside the project. You can't really think about the reception. It has to be worth it even if no one reads it. "

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" The relationship between violence and nonviolence in this country is interesting. The fact of the matter is, you know, people do respond to riots. The 1968 Housing Act was in large response to riots that broke out after Dr. Martin Luther King was killed. They cited these as an actual inspiration. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

" I'm a writer. My job is to speak what - that which I think is true. If that bridges the gap, that's good. If it doesn't, that's too bad. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

" I think at places like 'Slate' or the magazine where I work, there was a really poor record of hiring African-American writers. It was really that simple. And I think with the proliferation of the Internet and Internet media, it has been a little harder to maintain that gatekeeper position. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

" Rates of black poverty have decreased. Black teen-pregnancy rates are at record lows - and the gap between black and white teen-pregnancy rates has shrunk significantly. But such progress rests on a shaky foundation, and fault lines are everywhere. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Black And White

" There isn't a dude outside my dad who had greater influence on my life. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

" When I see Bruce Banner becoming the Hulk, it's only a picture. My imagination has to do some of the work there, to impute feeling and everything. We're talking about something that's so surreal, it's just not possible within the world as we know it. So that requires a form that is not so literal. "

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

Ta-Nehisi Coates

" Abraham Lincoln is singular. Abraham Lincoln, before he was killed, stood up and, you know, for the first time from any sitting president, stood for the right for suffrage for African-American men who had served in the Civil War. And that's a limited suffrage, but it was quite radical at the time. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

" Chaos is what we have. That is what I believe. "

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" I love America the way I love my family - I was born into it. And there's no escape out of it. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

" I don't completely understand why people in Aspen want to hear what I have to say. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

" In comics, you have to imagine what happens. I really loved it; I loved collecting. I loved following the adventures and figuring out what was going to happen next. I was a huge X-Men fan; I was a huge Spider-Man fan, and, to large degree, I remain one. It's literature for me; it's art. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

" We are all losers in comparison to Malala Yousafzai. But we are not all geniuses. Like me. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

" The process of getting conscious, for me, was a very, very uncomfortable, disturbing, and sometimes physically painful process. And so that's the standard to which I write, because it was what I've experienced over my time. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

" The Ku Klux Klan is the most profligate domestic terrorist organization in this country's history. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

" Well into the 20th century, black people spoke of their flight from Mississippi in much the same manner as their runagate ancestors had. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

" When you read a comic book, there's a space between what's happening on the panel and what you have to literally see in your mind. That's not true of movies, where you see everything. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

" We look at young black kids with a scowl on their face, walking a certain way down the block with their sweatpants dangling, however, with their hoodies on. And folks think that this is a show of power or a show of force. But I know, because I've been among those kids, it ultimately is fear. "

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" Outside of hip-hop, it was in comics that I most often found the aesthetics and wisdom of my world reflected. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

" White racial grievance enjoys automatic credibility, and even when disproven, it is never disqualifying of its bearers. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

" I'm not familiar particularly with Hillary Clinton's neighborhood, but I wish people were a little bit more curious about what we call privilege and about why it's there. Black people in this country have no choice but to be curious. We have to know. I wish folks would do a little bit more investigation. "

Ta-Nehisi Coates

" 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