Jessica Williams Quotes

The most moving parts of 'Real American' come when Lythcott-Haims stares unflinchingly at her own self-loathing, writing about the racist encounters of her childhood that convinced her from a young age that there was something inherently wrong with being black.

I was making comebacks every single year. That makes it difficult mentally. It causes a lot of stress.

As a black man, so often you grow up suppressing your emotions and sensitivity.

For all of the continued awareness of systemic violence and oppression, there isn't a lot of talk about that psychological toll of racism, at least in white circles and white media.

A lot of black women still carry a lot of pain when they see black men with women who aren't black, and that's really unfortunate that that could make us so upset. It has to do with self esteem.

Preparing oneself for the possibility of confronting racism triggers something that slowly chips away at physical and emotional well-being.

In many ways, everything about my upbringing decreed that I wouldn't write a memoir because in the world where I grew up, in Chicago in the Fifties and Sixties, one key way of protesting ourselves - 'we' meaning black people - against racism, against its stereotypes and its insults, was to curate and narrate very carefully the story of the people.

If you are born black, and you don't accept your natural status as a victim, then the validity of your blackness is immediately called into question.

When you're a black superhero, you can't erase the notion that you're black. If you're black, living in the community, and you want to change things, there are going to be things that happen. That's true of anybody. I mean, you could use celebrity as a similar metaphor.

As much as I'd love to believe that we are 'post-racial' - an idea that really gained traction after the election of Barack Obama in 2008 - I can never escape the fact that in the world I am perceived as a 'black man' and, in certain parts of the world, as a 'black gay man.'

Being an NBA player, a lot of stress comes with that: realizing there's a lot of pressure on me and accepting that for what it is, realizing that I might need help, I might need somebody to talk to, accepting that there's nothing wrong with that.

When a person is juggling a lot of emotions in a single day, it can take a toll.

I think if you're stressed, it shows in every part of you; how you carry yourself, which then affects your pose, how you hold your face, which then makes you look stressed and so nothing looks relaxed.

I think the 'sunken place' - that term is what I hear when I'm just casually living my life. People say it around me. Not because they're around me; they're saying it because it articulated a state of mind. Lil Wayne's rapped about it.

When people talked about O.J. Simpson being race-neutral, that was a race card. It just meant we don't think of him as black. But race-neutral is just like flesh-tone Band-aids. It's not neutral; it's white.

I can't be so guarded up all the time. I know it's not healthy.

Our blackness and how to survive being black in America was something that our parents instilled in us extraordinarily well.

This is, i think, very much the Age of Anxiety, the age of the neurosis, because along with so much that weighs on our minds there is perhaps even more that grates on our nerves.

You cannot be responsible for Jim Crow. You can not be responsible for racism. This is much more a problem for the person exercising racism.You are confronted with the reality of racism when you go in the streets, when the eyes of others come upon you. [James] Baldwin goes back with you to all the experiences you went through and gives a name to them, and explains why it is like this.

It is not work that kills, but "worry."

To be angry once in a while is really good fun, because it makes others so miserable. But to be angry morning, noon and night, as I am, grows monotonous and prevents my gaining any other pleasure in life.

Stress means there is something wrong, and you are not aligned with life.

Stress is the spice of life.

The number of stressors has multiplied exponentially: traffic, money, success, work/life balance, the economy, the environment, parenting, family conflict, relationships, disease. As the nature of human life has become far more complicated, our ancient stress response hasn't been able to keep up.

Your worst enemy, he reflected, was your nervous system. At any moment the tension inside you was liable to translate itself into some visible symptom.