Black Author Quotes

“My parents are not special people, they’re ordinary, and one of my problems is that I’m expecting perfection from ordinary people. They’re not saints or masters of knowledge just people, people who have children, which, last time I checked, required no proficiency test. People who continue to make mistakes, attempt to learn from them and repeat, until death.”
― Jessica George, Maame

“I think about how the language I’ve mourned never learning has on some levels already been taught. A language I thought too difficult to warrant effort has already embedded itself into me.”
― Jessica George, Maame

“A healed Black woman is a force to be reckoned with.”
― Bethanee Epifani J. Bryant

“While protesting in the street,
I am fighting for the rights of my community.
While navigating my community,
I am fighting to be loved.
What more do Black women have to sacrifice to be loved by Black men? To be seen as worthy of fighting for.
We have given everything.
What have you given in return, Beloved?
I cannot fight for you, and fight against you.
I cannot honor your spirit,
while you diminish mine.”
― Bethanee Epifani J. Bryant

“Whatever good you have to bring into the world will be beneficial and it will be more than enough.”
― Bethanee Epifani J. Bryant

“...Brae, this is the season on Mercinia which makes adult Ursus shifters turn to cubs. The only difference is mistakes of children can be forgotten, but mistakes of adults can lead to war...”
― S L Gibson, Love Changes Everything

“Black Beauty is not acknowledged, affirmed, or celebrated unless it is showcased on a non-Black body. We are the blueprint they publicly denounce and secretly covet. They will always be caricatures of our authenticity. Who are they without us?”
― Bethanee Epifani J. Bryant

“[Art] must reflect the world in all its brutality and beauty, not in hopes of changing it but in the mean and selfish desire to not be enrolled in its lie, to not be coopted by the television dreams, to not ignore the great crimes all around us.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy

“Don't let anyone shame you into becoming hopeless. It's ok to be hopeful. Hope doesn't deny reality. You're simply allowing space for your optimism to become the reality.”
― Bethanee Epifani J. Bryant

“It was no accident that my caste radar worked more efficiently when there was a group of people interacting among themselves. Caste is, in a way, a performance, and I could detect the caste positions of people in a group but not necessarily a single Indian by himself or herself. "There is never caste," the Dalit leader Ambedkar once said. "Only castes.”
― Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

“Safe spaces have boundaries. You are a safe space. So set your boundaries.”
― Bethanee Epifani J. Bryant, Don't Fall Prey! Dating Tales, Trials, & Triumphs

“I revel in the beauty that God has given me of which there is no end.”
― Bethanee Epifani J. Bryant, My Quarter-of-a-Century Life Lessons:Building a Foundation for Success

“Então Úrsula, a pobre órfã, ajoelhou aos pés do leito, e volvendo em seus braços o corpo inanimado, com seus lábios, trêmulos de dor, tocou os lábios frios e inertes de sua mãe, tentando, embalde, transmitir ao coração materno o hálito ardente, que a animava.
Mas quando voltou à realidade, quando teve plena consciência de que estava só, e entregue ao rigor da sua sorte, quando pôde acreditar que sua mãe já não existia, então prorrompeu em lágrimas, e estorceu-se pelo chão, e agitou-se como uma possessa, porque as grandes e profundas dores do coração só acham alívio na expansão ilimitada da dor, e na fadiga do corpo e do espírito...”
― Maria Firmina dos Reis, Úrsula

“Pretenderá em vão lutar contra a tua vontade, e nunca te poderá arrancar da alma a sublime afeição, que deste a outrem. Louco! A mulher só ama uma vez. No seu coração imprimiu Deus um sentir tão puro e tão verdadeiro, que o homem não pode duvidar dos seus afetos.
E a mulher cumpre na terra sua missão de amor e de paz; e depois de a ter cumprido volta ao céu; porque ela passou no mundo à semelhança de um anjo consolador.
Esta é a mulher.
Mas aquela, cujas formas eram tão sedutoras, tão belas, aquela, cujas aparências mágicas e arrebatadoras escondiam um coração árido de afeições puras, e desinteressadas... Oh! Essa não compreendeu para que veio habitar entre os homens; porque a cobiça hedionda envenenou-lhe os nobres sentimentos do coração.
O brilho do ouro deslumbrou-a, e ela vendeu seu amor ao primeiro que lho ofereceu. Maldição!... Infâmia sobre a mulher que não compreendeu a sua honrosa
missão, e trocou por outro os sublimes afetos da sua alma.”
― Maria Firmina dos Reis, Úrsula

“O amor que se nutre no coração do homem generoso é puro e nobre,
leal e santo, profundo e imenso, e capaz de quanta virtude o mundo pode
conhecer, de quanta dedicação se possa conceber. Ele o eleva acima de si
próprio, e as suas ações são o perfume embriagador desse sentimento, que o
anima: mas o amor no peito do homem feroz e concupiscente é uma paixão
funesta, que conduz ao crime, que lhe mata a alma e a despenha no inferno.”
― Maria Firmina dos Reis, Úrsula

“The road has not been easy, but you are still here. Still learning, but wiser; scarred, but healing; seeking the perfection and the beauty that is already yours.”
― Bethanee Epifani J. Bryant

“It's amazing how we unconsciously magnify the things we don't want.”
― Bethanee Epifani J. Bryant, My Quarter-of-a-Century Life Lessons:Building a Foundation for Success

“Feeling like the phoenix.”
― Bethanee Epifani J. Bryant, My Quarter-of-a-Century Life Lessons:Building a Foundation for Success

“Learning that the simple things tend to be the most profoud.”
― Bethanee Epifani J. Bryant

“Can't nothing make your life work if you ain't the architect.”
― Terry McMillan, Disappearing Acts

“My focus is on progression, not perfection. My progression is already perfect -- unfolding as it should, when it should, according to divine alignment”
― Bethanee Epifani J. Bryant

“I'm hungry and I can't wait any longer for you to finish talking to yourself.”
― Toni Shiloh, Winning His Trust

“When the crop that brought wealth under the banner of Christianity is found to destroy human lungs but trees older than Jesus breathe, it makes me think the meek shall inherit the earth.”
― Imani Perry, South to America: A Journey Below the Mason Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation

“No matter the place, war looks, smells, and sounds the same. Wars also wreak the same turmoil. Grief and heartache. Starvation and desperation”
― N.D. Jones, Bearly Gold: A Goldilocks and the Three Bears Reimagining

“What an idiot I am. I created a pact with children. Not even a blood pact but a vow that yields nothing for my kettle or Wake. A vow born of weakness. But a vow all the same. I will not fail them, no matter the cost.”
― N.D. Jones, Bearly Gold: A Goldilocks and the Three Bears Reimagining

“Fayola wore nothing underneath. Nothing but skin in need of his touch. Hands, mouth and more. "Six months," she said, her voice a sultry whisper of repressed need.”
― N.D. Jones, Bearly Gold: A Goldilocks and the Three Bears Reimagining

“Too many chili peppers. Yuck. Why would someone use so many? Is it a bear thing?”
― N.D. Jones, Bearly Gold: A Goldilocks and the Three Bears Reimagining

“When they ask me how I weathered the storm, I will tell them I did not. I was ravished like the zinc houses and devoured like the soil as it swallowed itself whole. I was ruined. I was disaster. I was dancing in the eye of God’s will.
‘Thank you,’ I whisper as we ascend into the sky.

How beautiful it was to be destroyed.”
― Asha Ashanti Bromfield, Hurricane Summer

“The only cure for WHITE SUPREMACY is BLACK EXCELLENCE." Jason Black in BLACK: The Bear on Our Backs”
― Jeh Allen, BLACK: BOOK ONE: The Bear on Our Backs

“..it’s critical for us to understand our trauma and live in our truth so that we can deal and heal properly.”
― Nijiama Smalls, The Black Girl's Guide to Healing Emotional Wounds