Best 30 quotes of Ntozake Shange on MyQuotes

Being alive and being a woman is all I got, but being colored is a metaphysical dilemma I haven't conquered yet.

Creation is everything you do. Make something.

I am gonna write poems til i die and when i have gotten outta this body i am gonna hang round in the wind and knock over everybody who got their feet on the ground.

i found god in myself and i loved her i loved her fiercely

I hit my head against the wall because I don't want to know all the terrible things that I know about. I don't want to feel all these wretched things, but they're in me already. If I don't get rid of them, I'm not ever going to feel anything else.

I'm a firm believer that language and how we use language determines how we act, and how we act then determines our lives and other people's lives.

I'm committed to the idea that one of the few things human beings have to offer is the richness of unconscious and conscious emotional responses to being alive. ... The kind of esteem that's given to brightness/smartness obliterates average people or slow learners from participating fully in human life, particularly technical and intellectual life. But you cannot exclude any human being from emotional participation.

I started writing because there's an absence of things I was familiar with or that I dreamed about. One of my senses of anger is related to this vacancy - a yearning I had as a teenager. . .and when I get ready to write, I think I'm trying to fill that. . .

i usedta live in the world really be in the world free & sweet talkin good mornin & thank-you & nice day uh huh i cant now i cant be nice to nobody nice is such a rip-off regular beauty & a smile in the street is just a set-up

I write for young girls of color, for girls who don’t even exist yet, so that there is something there for them when they arrive. I can only change how they live, not how they think.

my spirit is too ancient to understand the separation of soul & gender

nice is such a rip-off.

Novels allow me to create a whole world.

one thing I don’t need is any more apologies i got sorry greetin me at my front door you can keep yrs i don’t know what to do wit em they don’t open doors or bring the sun back they don’t make me happy or get a mornin paper didn’t nobody stop usin my tears to wash cars cuz a sorry.

our dreams draw blood from old sores.

Our society allows people to be absolutely neurotic and totally out of touch with their feelings and everyone else's feelings, and yet be very respectable.

Right now being born a girl is to be born threatened.

somebody/ anybody sing a black girl's song bring her out to know herself to know you but sing her rhythms carin/ struggle/ hard times sing her song of life she's been dead so long closed in silence so long she doesn't know the sound of her own voice her infinite beauty she's half-notes scattered without rhythm/ no tune sing her sighs sing the song of her possibilities sing a righteous gospel let her be born let her be born & handled warmly.

The slaves who were ourselves had known terror intimately, confused sunrise with pain, & accepted indifference as kindness.

When I die, I will no be guilty of having left a generation of girls behind thinking that anyone can tend to their emotional health other than themselves.

When words & manners leave you no space for yourself make very personal very clear & your obstructions will join you or disappear.

but bein alive & bein a woman & bein colored is a metaphysical dilemma/ i havent conquered yet/ do you see the point my spirit is too ancient to understand the separation of soul & gender/ my love is too delicate to have thrown back on my face my love is too delicate to have thrown back on my face my love is too beautiful to have thrown back on my face my love is too sanctified to have thrown back on my face my love is too magic to have thrown back on my face my love is too saturday nite to have thrown back on my face my love is too complicated to have thrown back on my face my love is too music to have thrown back on my face

Cypress laid waste to the tunnels, caverns, and shadows of the other world. She drew upon memories of her own blood: her presence would be a mortal threat to those who wounded, maimed, her ancestors, her lovers, Leroy. Like those women before her, who loaded bundles on their heads and marched off to fields that were not their own, like the "bearers" of her dreams swamped with births of infants they would never rear, Cypress clung to her body, the body of a dancer; the chart of her recklessness, her last weapon, her perimeters: blood, muscle, and the will to simply change the world.

Ever since I realized there waz someone callt/ a colored girl an evil woman a bitch or a nag/ i been tryin not to be that & leave bitterness/ in somebody else's cup...

Exiles, she and Leroy. They didn't need to go to Paris; that would do no good. What's the point of being spat on in France? What could they do in Rio, where black people are a mythological presence? No, the frontiers in Leroy's destiny were the sounds he heard and gave back as music; for Cypress the terrain of the new world was art. Her dance, like her people before her, adapted to the contours of her new land.

i am really colored & really sad sometimes & you hurt me more than i ever danced outta/ i am ready to die like a lily in the desert/ & i cdnt let you in on it cuz i didnt know/ here is what i have/ poems/ big thighs/ lil tits/ & so much love/ will you take it from me this one time/ please this is for you

i done forgot all abt words aint got no definitions

i found god in myself & i loved her/ i loved her fiercely

The slaves who were ourselves had known terror intimately, confused sunrise with pain, & accepted indifference as kindness.

What I want and I wanted to be unforgettable.