Aja Naomi King Quotes

To be human and to be adult means constantly to be in the grip of opposing emotions, to have daily to reconcile apparently conflicting tensions. I want this, but need that. I cherish this, but I adore its opposite too.

I'm way more in my head acting than I am when I'm writing. So there's a weird love/hate on both ends. But writing, as tough as it is, I get so much more out of it. It's like climbing Mt. Everest.

Nothing wrong with changing your mind. That's a very unwaffling thing to say: "Nothing wrong..." Who am I to say that there's nothing wrong with it? Maybe something is wrong with changing your mind. Anyway, love is very, very difficult. I love. But probably because I hate myself on some deep, sick level, it makes loving difficult. But I do try.

The frustrations and joys of parenthood are just hard to understand until you have a kid... the constant fight you're having with yourself, like loving being with your kid but also being kind of bored and wanting to look at your iPhone - it's kind of an interesting thing that's hard to write about before you've experienced it.

I feel like I'm in my own head a lot; it just feels amazing, but scary, weird and confusing.

It's like I had two things pulling at me: you want to be a fighter, and you have problems. So I couldn't be a fighter, and I wasn't solving any problems.

It's a weird dynamic - I guess there is a fine line between hope and sadness. Sometimes you can be feeling both at the same time.

Like most people, I find my own experiences - and my emotional responses to those experiences - fascinating and mysterious, even those that are a bit shaming and a little repellent.

'Confusion is the last stop on the way to clarity,' he told me. 'The part of your mind that thinks it knows it all is butting up against a bigger idea. It's only a matter of time until the smaller thought gives way to the greater. Don't fight it. Just try to enjoy the ride.'

What the mind cannot accept, the heart can finally never adore.

Love should be simple, but it's not. Hate should be hard, but it's easy.

I've been the saddest while I've been the most successful, strangely.

I'm not starting my own religion, I'm not preaching, and I'm not starting a church of any kind, but I love being able to accumulate so many experiences over the years and use that as ammunition for what I truly believe in.

Sometimes you know in your heart you love someone, but you have to go away before your head can figure it out.

It's because I like you, I don't want to be with you. It's a complicated emotion.

Although every man believes that his decisions and resolutions involve the most multifarious factors, in reality they are mere oscillation between flight and longing.

If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell.

You had to hate the Colonel a whole lot to keep from loving him.

You cannot escape what you have to deal with inside yourself. It will never bring good things. It will only bring madness.

he used to think that he wanted to be good, he wanted to be kind, he wanted to be brave and wise, but it was all pretty difficult. He wanted to be loved, too, if he could fit it in.

Modern science knows much about such conflicts. We call the mental state that engenders it "ambivalence": a collision between thought and feeling.

It is the moment when our resolution seems about to become irrevocable--when the fatal iron gates are about to close upon us--that tests our strength. Then, after hours of clear reasoning and firm conviction, we snatch at any sophistry that will nullify our long struggles, and bring us the defeat that we love better than victory.

I want to think and at the same time that's the last thing in the world I want to do.

Hatred would have been easier. With hatred, I would have known what to do. Hatred is clear, metallic, one-handed, unwavering; unlike love.

Creating success is a tug of war between your mind and your heart-your fears and your dreams. If your fears win, you lose.