Between the World and Me, ​Ta-Nehisi Coates

"I have spent much of my studies searching for the right question by which I might fully understand the breach between the world and me."

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"Difference in hue and hair is old. But the belief in the preeminence of hue and hair, the notion that these factors can correctly organize a society and that they signify deeper attributes, which are indelible--this is the new idea at the heart of these new people who have been brought up hopelessly, tragically, deceitfully, to believe that they are white." ​ p. 7 ​

"The pursuit of knowing was freedom to me, the right to declare your own curiosities and follow them through all manner of books. I was made fo the library, not the classroom. The classroom was a jail of other people's interests. The library was open, unending, free." ​ p. 48 ​

"I am not a cynic. I love you, and I love the world, and I love it more with every new inch I discover. But you are a black boy, and you must be responsible for your body in a way that other boys cannot know. Indeed you must be responsible for the worst actions of other black bodies, which, somehow, will always be assigned to you. And you must be responsible for the bodies of the powerful--the policeman who cracks you with a nightstick will quickly find his excuse in your furtive movements. And this is not reducible to just you--the women around you must be responsible for their bodies in a way that you never will know. You have to make your peace with the chaos, but you cannot lie. You cannot forget how much they took from us and how they transfigured our very bodies into sugar, tobacco, cotton, and gold." ​ p. 71