Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes

American - Journalist | September 30, 1975 -

I'm not going to break up my family, not for a book.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

FamilyBookUpBreakGoingBreak Up

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

Ta-Nehisi Coates

LifeInfluenceMy LifeOutsideDude

One of the things we tell ourselves as African-Americans is if we work hard, play by the rules, we do start back a little ways, but if we can be twice as good, somehow we can escape history and heritage and legacy.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

WorkGoodHistoryLegacyStartPlay

There was no United States before slavery. I am sure somebody can make some sort of argument about modern French identity and slavery and North Africa, but there simply is no American history before black people.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

HistoryI AmIdentityPeopleSlavery

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

PoetryMeAmbitionStartVoicePoet

My dad always associated information with liberation. He was very much in that Malcolm X tradition.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

TraditionInformationAlwaysHeMuch

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.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

ChangePathPeaceGovernmentYouUp

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

FamilyHomeSchoolSafetyNightYou

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

TimeProudAmericanWayTwoFiction

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.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

TruthResponsibilityWritingThink

I think a lot about the private emotions of black people - what we feel and yet is rarely publicly expressed.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

PeopleBlackThinkFeelEmotions

I wasn't the biggest Captain America fan, but increasingly, I see him as a great character. Winter Soldier really got into what it meant to actually represent America.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

WinterCharacterGreatAmericaSee

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