Angie Thomas Quotes

“‘Everybody wants to talk about how Khalil died,’ I say. ‘But this isn’t about how Khalil died. It’s about the fact that he lived. His life mattered. Khalil lived!’ I look at the cops again. ‘You hear me? Khalil lived!’”

“And to every kid in Georgetown and in all ‘the Gardens’ of the world: your voices matter, your dreams matter, your lives matter. Be the roses that grow in the concrete.”

“The bullhorn is as heavy as a gun. Ironic since Ms. Ofrah said to use my weapon.”

“What’s the point of having a voice if you’re gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn’t be?”

“It’s dope to be black until it’s hard to be black.”

“You’re making us out to be monsters.”

“When the Khalils get arrested for selling drugs, they either spend most of their life in prison, another billion-dollar industry, or they have a hard time getting a real job and probably start selling drugs again. That’s the hate they’re giving us, baby, a system designed against us. That’s Thug Life.”

“I can’t stand myself for doing it, but I do it anyway.”

“Sometimes you can do everything right and things will still go wrong. The key is to never stop doing right.”

“Being two different people is so exhausting. I’ve taught myself to speak with two different voices and only say certain things around certain people. I’ve mastered it. As much as I say I don’t have to choose which Starr I am with Chris, maybe without realizing it, I have to an extent. Part of me feels like I can’t exist around people like him.”

“When people say it’s for life, it’s for life. You gotta be willing to die in it or die for it. You want out?”

“People are realizing and shouting and marching and demanding. They’re not forgetting. I think that’s the most important part.”

“I was making good money too, and it was honestly hard to consider walking away from it.”

“Daddy once told me there’s a rage passed down to every black man from his ancestors, born the moment they couldn’t stop the slave masters from hurting their families. Daddy also said there’s nothing more dangerous than when that rage is activated.”

“Intentions always look better on paper than in reality.”

“My voice is changing already. It always happens around ‘other’ people, whether I’m at Williamson or not. I don’t talk like me or sound like me. I choose every word carefully and make sure I pronounce them well. I can never, ever let anyone think I’m ghetto.”

“You can destroy wood and brick, but you can’t destroy a movement.”

“‘Brave doesn’t mean you’re not scared, Starr,’ she says. ‘It means you go on even though you’re scared. And you’re doing that.’”

“At an early age I learned that people make mistakes, and you have to decide if their mistakes are bigger than your love for them.”

“I can’t change where I come from or what I’ve been through, so why should I be ashamed of what makes me, me?”

“I’m feeling real bad for her all of a sudden. “If he is mine, you won’t be doing this alone no more, a’ight? I’ll come over and help as much as I can.”

“My life got thrown into a blender and I’m left with something I don’t recognize. On top of that, I’m suddenly somebody’s pops and I wish I had my pops.”

″‘I decided I was gon’ be the kind of father she deserved,’ he says. ‘I had to man up. That’s what you gotta do, Mav. Man up.‘”

″‘That’s what matters,’ Dre says. ‘Parenting is hard, cuz. You gon’ break sometimes. The most important thing is that you pull yourself together and go back, playboy.‘”

“Pops told me the other day that grief something we all gotta carry. I never understood that till now. Feel like I got a boulder on my back. It weigh down my whole body, and I be wanting to cry out to make the pain go away. Men ain’t supposed to cry. We supposed to be strong enough to carry our boulders and everybody else’s.”

“It takes a village to raise a child. Seven has a big one. That means that you do too.”

″‘You gotta live for you and Dre now, you feel me? You can do everything he didn’t get a chance to do.’ I never thought of that. ‘Raise your son. Be the best father you can be,’ Shawn says. ‘That’s how you honor Dre. A’ight?‘”

“One of them yell out, ‘Don’t let them punk you, Li’l Don and Li’l Zeke! It don’t matter that my pops been locked up for nine years or that King’s pops been dead almost as long. They still Big Don, the former crown, and Big Zeke, his right-had man. That make me Li’l Don and King Li’l Zeke. Guess we not old enough to go by our own names yet.”

“The person who killed my cousin got killed. It’s been a weird three weeks since it happened. ‘Cause Ant was shot at a school function it was all over the news. His parents cried on TV, and I realized he had parents. Like Dre. Some kids at school were really tore up over his death, and I realized he had friends. Like Dre. At the stadium, he got a memorial in the parking lot with flowers and balloons. Like Dre. Everybody get mourned by somebody, I guess. Even murderers.”

“It takes a village to raise a child. Seven has a big one. That means that you do too.”

″‘Anyway, I’m Li’l Don. Everybody expected me to join.’ ‘Because the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree?’ Mr. Wyatt asks. ‘However, it can roll away from the tree. It simply need a little push.‘”