Angie Thomas Quotes

People are always saying, English, English, English rose, and I just feel so completely different.

What is blackness? Is it the way you talk? Do you got to say, 'Dey this, dey dat.' Or the way you dress? Or is it the forgiving of certain things? What is black enough?

I'm against the idea of force-feeding all of Canada on two languages.

I'm black, and it's a very important part of what I am. I'm not embarrassed about it.

I didn't always see someone that I could relate to, that would tell me that being Black and gay is okay.

It's maybe a better thought to change the perception of an accent than to avoid it all together.

Learn to love being black.

One of the biggest problems is - you know, I've got some Hispanic friends - is that a lot of those folks that don't know English, is primarily because they don't even know Spanish. They don't even know their own language.

So what's really behind the 'English Only' Movement? Fear. Fear of being taken over and one day they will have to learn something different. Heaven forbid they would have to learn something new.

When I was going to school, I just wanted to be like everybody else. I would pull at my hair to try and get it to lie straight. America was where I would consume and absorb black culture, buy Ultra Sheen and watch 'Soul Train,' but I still had that weird in-between thing.

I've heard that I've gotten a lighter complexion, as if I've bleached my skin. I think that is so stupid and ludicrous. For those who want to bleach their skin, that's fine. I just didn't bleach mine. I'm a black woman. I don't want to be anything but a black woman.

When people speak their own language you get a much better sense of who they are.

It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual, but it is a curse for a society to be bilingual… A society must be able to talk amongst itself.

Bilingualism is not an imposition on the citizens - it is an imposition on the state.

We will never have "a" Chicano English or Spanish because of regional differences. But I think that because of our bilingual history, we'll always be speaking a special kind of English and Spanish. What we do have to do is fight for the right to use those two languages in the way that it serves us.

Languages and cultures are disappearing at an enormously fast rate, and many of them are in Canada. These are extreme examples of removal of freedom of expression - to actually lose a language and the ability to express that culture.

There is no such thing as an ugly accent, like there's no such thing as an ugly flower.

We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased, we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too.

Being in the space that I am as a writer, and just as a black dude in America, there's this push to be cool or be what you're expected to be. There's a need for a song that puts that in perspective. I think that's an important thing for young children to hear growing up.

I love accents in general. I'm obsessed with dialects, and I had to write a whole movie about it called 'In a World...'

Bilingualism is a great asset for any individual, but it has perilous consequences for a nation.

I didn't always value the ways black people talked. I thought, in order to make art out of it, you had to change it.

The black experience for me has been very interesting. Some days, I wake up, and I feel really black. Some days, I'm like, 'This is me. I'm black. Black Lives Matter. Black pride. Look at my cocoa skin.' I just feel it's my being.

Here's my advice to my brown friends: The next time you're on an airplane in the U.S., just speak your mother tongue. That way, no one knows what you're saying. Life goes on.

I love dialects and accents; they're something that really resonate with me and that I find fascinating.