Shaun King Quotes

Over the years you encounter just about every kind of crime. It doesn't harden you, but you become capable of reporting on just about anything human beings can do. However, any time we're dealing with the murder of a child it is always difficult.

There have been two popular subjects for poetry in the last few decades: the Vietnam War and AIDS, about both of which almost all of us have felt deeply.

You stand with the least likely to succeed until success is succeeded by something more valuable: kinship. You stand with the belligerent, the surly and the badly behaved until bad behavior is recognized for the language it is: the vocabulary of the deeply wounded and of those whose burdens are more than they can bear.

Abuse a man unjustly, and you will make friends for him.

I have this soft spot for have-nots. So, I was really inclined to portray their pain and pathos in 'Highway.'

Often, those with the most to lose as a result of a poor policy move are the most vulnerable and most marginalized. Those folks need a voice, and I will endeavor to be that voice.

Rebellion is the necessary result of injustice. It may not always achieve its purpose, or be intended to do so, but a conviction of injustice endured must precede articulate rebellion. Nor is it always certain that injustice will be followed by rebellion – it would be very much better for the world if this was the case. But where the victims of aggression or custom are ignorant and disunited, the opportunities for reasoned and effective revolt are practically reduced to nothing…

Any time something goes wrong, Republicans pick on women and minorities.

At the moment we have a ruling class that has one law and the people the other.

It is impossible for one class to appreciate the wrongs of another.

Our family were outsiders, and I've always had a sense of the outsider, the underdog, and a strong sense of justice towards people who are excluded.

These days, my subjects are murder and mayhem and other terrible things that happen to people - things that are even worse than cutting yourself shaving. And these are not the sorts of things you feel the need to experience before you write about them.

I think people really need to think what it's like to have all of society arrayed against you.

If I feel any marginalisation, it's because the things that concern me aren't so important to other people.

'Firelight' is a beautiful story about a lot of young women. My character, Caroline, is a girl who has a bad boyfriend, and he ends up getting her locked up and incarcerated.

I don't believe in revenge. When people are bullies it's because of a deeper-rooted issue - either their family life is tough or they're being bullied by someone bigger than they are.

Let the poor man count as his enemy, and his worst enemy, every invader of the right of free discussion.

I had a wonderful family including my aunts, uncles and cousins but they've all gone to heaven.

Obviously, I got very lucky that even though I lost my mother, I lost her later in life, but it's still had a profound effect on me.

There is also a natural and very, very strong empathy with the underdog, with people who have suffered, people who have been pushed around by foreigners in particular, but also by their own people.

When I was 12 years old, my father was killed. I lost a loved one to violence. The pain was because I lost my father. It didn't matter that he was an officer... It shaped my life. If anything, it made me a strong advocate for the victims of violence.

Jews, black people - any people who are hated or who have suffered, either as individuals or as a people - use humour. It is a survival skill.

My dad died when he was 60. I was only 17 and I think, psychologically, that had a huge impact on me, probably more than I realised.

I usually play disenfranchised youth.

I have a husband and children, and it affects me deeply that somebody could be taken away in a second.