Zora Neale Hurston Quotes

I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.

Every day of my life I walk with the idea I am black no matter how successful I am.

In [Ralph] Ellison's case, it's more psychological than it is phenomenal, and it's conditioned by anger, animosity, and lack of desire to engage with the black body. There was always simultaneity that had nothing to do with visuality. You can be there and not be there at the same time and be fully visible all the time. That's what really struck me about Ellison .

The race is your face. Obviously, I come from a mixed background. Who I am and how I look and being black.

My books are not about how it feels to be a black man. My books are about how it feels to be a human being, and part of what I'm trying to sort out is what we mean - what I mean, what you mean, what everybody in the culture means - when they say 'black man,' or they say 'white person.'

I'm fully conscious all the time that I'm an American Negro, because it's part of my life. But I also know that if I want to say, 'I see a bus full of people,' I don't have to say, 'I am a Negro seeing a bus full of people.'

I had to say to myself, 'I haven't written enough about blackness, yet it's part of my consciousness and my lived experience.' I had to get over that anxiety of 'I haven't done this before.'

A lot of the things I do deal with my race, but my race is who I am. I'm an American kid who grew up listening to predominantly hip-hop. I will talk about hip-hop as the music I grew up listening to, and I think sometimes people like to put it as, 'Oh, well, he's talking about black things.' And, yeah, they are, but that's my American identity.

I forgot he [Barack Obama] was black tonight for an hour.

I think that [Eddie Murphy's famous "White Like Me"] is probably the first time I thought, "Oh. Being black is different. That is a totally different experience."

You know, I don't play the race card a lot. I'm half-black, half-white, and I'm proud of - my skin is brown. The world sees me as a black man, but my mother didn't raise me as a black man. She didn't raise me as a white guy.

Blackness is a state of mind, and I identify with the black community. Mainly, because I realized, early on, when I walk into a room, people see a black woman, they don't see a white woman. So out of that reason alone, I identify more with the black community.

The only thing Oriental about me, is my face.

I am black, and there's no getting around that, but being black doesn't define every aspect of my life.

Stories about race and identity pique my interest for obvious reasons. That's in my body, my brain, my history, my memories - it's all part of my toolbox as an actor.

I really didn't even realize I was a hybrid or that my parents were interracial until I was much older.

I've always considered myself a person of color.

Growing up, I played hockey because I loved playing it. I didn't view myself in minor hockey as a Black hockey player, but I was also aware that I was.

I get that question almost more than any other. Once people feel a little comfortable, they're always like, 'So, what, uh, uh, what, um, what's your ethnicity?'

This race and this country and this life produced me, he said. I shall express myself as I am.

I was aware of my race from a very young age. Not in a negative way. Coming from an interracial background, I think it is important to understand who you are.

Race is the least reliable information you can have about someone. It's real information, but it tells you next to nothing.

I'm pretty sure I can say that no one in my family ever asked Demetrie what it felt like to be black in Mississippi, working for our white family. It never occurred to us to ask. It was everyday life. It wasn't something people felt compelled to examine. I have wished, for many years, that I'd been old enough and thoughtful enough to ask Demetrie that question. She died when I was sixteen. I've spent years imagining what her answer would be. And that is why I wrote this book.

My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my 'blackness' than ever before.

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