Some people collect shoes, I collect writer’s quotes. Oh, and books, too, of course. Here are some of my favorite Black writer quotes. I’ll add more to the list every month so bookmark this page or pin it to a Pinterest board so you can come back whenever you want a little Black author inspiration.
Let the wisdom of our Black icons never be forgotten or suppressed!
Maya Angelou
“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.”
James Baldwin
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
Toni Morrison
“If you want to fly, you have to give up the things that weigh you down.”
Zora Neale Hurston
“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”
Octavia E. Butler
“All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change.”
Alice Walker
“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”
Bell Hooks
“What we do is more important than what we say or what we say we believe.”
Audre Lorde
“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
Zora Neale Hurston
“If you are silent about your pain, they will kill you and say you enjoyed it.”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
“Culture does not make people. People make culture.”
Langston Hughes
“Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.”
Yaa Gyasi
“We believe the one who has the power. He is the one who gets to write the story.”
Ta-Nehisi Coates
“Struggle is what it means to be alive and free.”
Roxane Gay
“Your self-worth is determined by you. You don’t have to depend on someone telling you who you are.”
W.E.B. Du Bois
“The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.”
Ntozake Shange
“Where there is a woman, there is magic.”
Colson Whitehead
“Truth was a changing display in a shop window, manipulated by hands when you weren’t looking.”
Gloria Naylor
“Time’s passage through the memory is like molten glass that can be opaque or crystallized at any given moment.”
Jesmyn Ward
“Grief is love’s unwillingness to let go.”
Buchi Emecheta
“A hungry man is an angry one.”
Ijeoma Oluo
“The beauty of anti-racism is that you don’t have to pretend to be free of racism to be anti-racist.”
Marita Golden
“Sometimes, being human is knowing when not to say anything at all.”
