Harlem Quotes - Page 5

• As long as what is is-and Georgia is Georgia-I will take Harlem for mine. At least, if trouble comes, I will have my own window to shoot from.

  Langston Hughes

  New York, Long, Georgia

  Langston Hughes, Donna Sullivan Harper (2002). “The Early Simple Stories”, p.41, University of Missouri Press

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• Eric Walrond, handsome, cosmopolitan, and beguilingly enigmatic, may have been the most promising literary talent of the Harlem Renaissance.... James Davis's finely written, beautifully paced Eric Walrond is a major biography of a fascinating figure.

  David Levering Lewis

  Eric, Renaissance, May

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• In the invincible and indescribable squalor of Harlem ... I was tormented. I felt caged, like an animal. I wanted to escape. I felt if I did not get out I would slowly strangle.

  James A. Baldwin

  Animal, Invincible, Squalor

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• Being in Harlem on the night of Barack Obama's election was extraordinary. It was the best street party I have ever gone to, and it felt like the period of American history which began with slavery had ended that evening.

  Hari Kunzru

  Party, Night, Evening

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• Before I started LimoLand, I mainly bought my clothes in Harlem, where I found clothing my size in fun colors. I still like to go there and see the vibrancy and colors of the neighborhood. I am also very influenced by the colors of my contemporary African and Japanese art collections.

  Jean Pigozzi

  Art, Fun, Color

  "Parking in the Meatpacking: Johnny Pigozzi". Interview with Colleen Nika, www.interviewmagazine.com. August 3, 2010.

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• I especially like Duke Ellington jazz, which is a little more... I lived in New York for a while. I lived in Harlem for a bit, and I just fell in love with the idea of that era of New York, that jazz era, especially jazz in Harlem.

  Charlie Day

  New York, Ideas, Littles

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• If there was a Harlem Globetrotters of rugby league, he’d be in it.

  Brett Morris

  Rugby League, Globetrotters, Ifs

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• I pass for a hypersensitive, reclusive neurotic, which I may well be, but I hope the year won't come when my anxieties and fatigue will destroy my love of this life, of all the things that inspire me--a line of music, a face in a Vermeer portrait, a character in an opera, or a model born in Harlem.

  Yves Saint Laurent

  Character, Years, Anxiety

  Yves Saint Laurent (1983). “Catalog of the Exhibition Held at the Costume”, p.22, Metropolitan Museum of Art

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• Well, I couldn't play an instrument. I'd just stand up front and announce the numbers. They had me sing a little, but that was a horrible mistake. I can't carry a tune in a bucket. We played black theaters and nightclubs all over hell. One-nighters. Apollo Theater in Harlem and the Earle Theater in Philly - That was big time for blacks.

  Jesse Owens

  Sports, Mistake, Athlete

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• I'm not guilty. You're the one that's guilty. The lawmakers, the politicians, the Colombian drug lords, all you who lobby against making drugs legal. Just like you did with alcohol during Prohibition. You're the one who's guilty. I mean, c'mon, let's kick the ballistics here: ain't no Uzi's made in Harlem. Not one of us in here owns a poppy field. This thing is bigger than Nino Brown. This is big business. This is the American way.

  Wesley Snipes

  Mean, Alcohol, Drug

  "Fictional character: Nino Brown". "New Jack City", 1991.

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• I like to go hear jazz late-night up in Harlem.

  Daniel Boulud

  Night, Jazz, Late

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• The Negro and all things negroid had become a fad, and Harlem had become a shrine to which feverish pilgrimages were in order . . . Seventh Avenue was the gorge into which Harlem cliff dwellers crowded to promenade.

  Wallace Thurman

  Order, Gorges, Shrines

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• If the poem is so moving that even if you have no experience in that particular setting be it 1920's Harlem let's say. You still are so moved that you can put yourself in that position. That means that the writer has managed to go beyond the personal and touch the humanity in all of us and it's really a blast to read it because I realize how that this does hold true for the truly great poems.

  Rita Dove

  Moving, Mean, Humanity

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. November 19, 2009.

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• I was a kid who liked art and theater and dance and music, but if you lived in Harlem, high culture was somewhere else, and it wasn't black.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Art, Kids, Somewhere Else

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• In Africa, you have no clean water, but you have good food options. In Harlem, everyone can shower and get fresh water, but you often have bad food options.

  Marcus Samuelsson

  Water, Clean, Good Food

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• We'll start signing Negroes when the Harlem Globetrotters start signing whites.

  George Preston Marshall

  Signing, Globetrotters

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• It's easy. [Black man] is - he's separate already. The fact that you have Harlem, the fact that you have the Negro ghetto and the so-called Negro slum, he's already separate.

  Malcolm X

  Ghetto, Men, Black

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• I talked to my mother about it a lot. I asked her what it was like to grow up in New York and Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s, and I asked her about a woman leaving her husband. I asked her about how she would feel about that woman, and my mother grew up in the Church Of God In Christ, and she told me that the woman might be isolated because the other women thought she might go and come after their husbands. That's how they thought then.

  Denzel Washington

  Mother, New York, Growing Up

  Source: shadowandact.com

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• One Harlem preacher likens us to the pink plastic spoons at Baskin Robbins: we give the world a foretaste of what lies ahead, the vision of the Biblical prophets. In a world gone astray we should be activity demonstrating here and now God's will for the planet.

  Philip Yancey

  Lying, Biblical, Giving

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• Hugs are great, but - better than drugs? Come on. Let me put it to you this way: I never drove to Harlem at 4 a.m. to get somebody to hug me.

  Artie Lange

  Drug, Hug, Way

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• I got a job as a children's librarian at PS 175 in Harlem, and that changed everything. That was an epiphany. I didn't know Harlem existed. I didn't know there was such a place, because I grew up in white Queens, where five miles is 100 miles.

  Lynne Stewart

  Jobs, Queens, Children

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• When I think of the Harlem Renaissance, I think of bright colors, and bold, dynamic art. African American artists of the period were, in large measure, breaking out of the constrictions white society had set for them. They were claiming and remaking their own images, and doing so in bold and striking ways.

  Nikki Grimes

  Art, Thinking, Color

  Source: www.hbook.com

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• When I was at UCLA, the Harlem Globetrotters offered me a million dollars to come play for them. I turned it down because my education was just as important as playing ball.

  Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

  Ucla, Play, Important

  Source: www.sbnation.com

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• I've worked over four dozen nine-to-five jobs before taking the chance to chase my dream of wanting to become an actor and filmmaker. Growing up in Brooklyn and Harlem, working at jobs like the bus company were great. I had benefits, a great salary, and security. But it wasn't my dream.

  Malcolm Goodwin

  Dream, Jobs, Growing Up

  "iZombie Actor Malcolm Goodwin: Life-Changing Leap of Faith". Interview with Robert Piper, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

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• That old Bobby Kennedy 1968 form of liberalism where you could be holding hands with the Appalachian family on one day and then be in Harlem the next day and nobody thinks it's weird, that is something that isn't as strong. It was strong in 2008. It hasn't been as strong since then. That's just a reality that we have to deal with that it's not just that the Republicans ran a terrible candidate who had bad ideas, it's also that the circle of love and affirmation that we have as progressives can sometimes just not be big enough.

  Van Jones

  Strong, Reality, Thinking

  Source: pen.org

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