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" The only people who usually have input on my writing are my wife and my editor. I'm not in conversation with anyone except the people I report on and the people I work with. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Only
Writing
Work
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" I had to learn to not be so hard. And I had a wife and, at that time, a partner when Samori was born, and for most of Samori's life, a partner, who, for whatever reason, did not have to learn that and was very tender and very, very soft with him. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Learn
Born
Partner
" It is, I think, the very chaos of America that allowed me to prosper. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Me
Chaos
America
" 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. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Look
World
Write
" 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.' "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Home
Safety
School
" The symbolic power of Barack Obama's presidency - that whiteness was no longer strong enough to prevent peons taking up residence in the castle - assaulted the most deeply rooted notions of white supremacy and instilled fear in its adherents and beneficiaries. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Power
Up
Fear
" The mainstream sort of presentation of the civil rights movement was not something that I directly inherited. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Presentation
Civil
Rights
" I just think that if one is going to preach nonviolence and one is going to advocate for nonviolence, one's standard should be consistent. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Just
Think
Advocate
" If I wrote a Jewish superhero, he'd have awesome time-traveling powers. I'd call him Doctorow. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Call
Superhero
Jewish
" Kaepernick's protest has been very successful. I really appreciate the fact that he's been giving away money to organisations; he pledged to give away a million dollars, and he's been doing it. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Giving
Doing
Appreciate
" I am always surprised people are surprised that people haven't read things. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
I Am
Always
Things
" 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. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Know
Expectations
Black
" My dad always associated information with liberation. He was very much in that Malcolm X tradition. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Much
Information
Tradition
" I don't attempt to make people uncomfortable; I think that my standards in terms of art and journalism always have necessitated my discomfort. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Journalism
Art
Always
" The ties between the Obama White House and the hip-hop community are genuine. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Obama
White
Community
" 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
Me
Over
Process
" In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body - it is heritage. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Heritage
Black
Destroy
" I don't know that white people need to be 'allies' so much as understand that any black struggle in America is ultimately a struggle for the large country. 'Ally' presumes a kind of distance that I am not sure exists. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
I Am
People
Black
" 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
Me
Writing
Want
" I was 24 when Samori was born. His mom was 23. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Mom
His
Born
" The two endorsements I'm most proud of come from Isabel Wilkerson and Toni Morrison. The latter is the greatest American fiction writer of our time, and the former is on her way to being the greatest American nonfiction writer of our time. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
American
Her
Proud
" 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. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Home
Think
Born
" If Obama's enormous symbolic power draws primarily from being the country's first black president, it also draws from his membership in hip-hop's foundational generation. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
First
Black
Power
" I feel sorry for people who only know comic books through movies. I really do. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Sorry
People
Movies
" 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
Wish
Black
Choice
" It's very hard to be black in this country and hate America. It's really hard to live like that. I would actually argue it's impossible to fully see yourself. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Live
Black
America
" I never expected my writing to become as popular as it did. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Expected
Did
Become
" 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. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Vote
Race
Justice
" Obama's presence opened a new field for writers, and what began as curiosity about the man himself eventually expanded into curiosity about the community he had so consciously made his home and all the old, fitfully slumbering questions he'd awakened about American identity. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Home
Man
Identity
" Long view of history shows evil triumphing more often than we'd like to admit. That's just how it is. I don't despair too much about dying, either. It's just a fact of being human. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
View
Admit
Dying
" I've been very, very careful to tell people what I am qualified to talk about and what I'm not qualified to talk about. "
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Careful
Been
Tell