Brendan Kiely Quotes

“He wasn’t strong because he wasn’t afraid. No, he was strong because he kept doing it even though he was afraid.”

“It was Dad’s voice in my head, or at least what I thought was his voice. I hadn’t heard it in so long, I couldn’t even tell if it was his or if I was making it up. Whatever it was, it got me to where I needed to get.”

“I wondered if anybody thought what we were doing was unpatriotic. It was weird. Thinking that to protest was somehow un-American . . . This was very American.”

“For all the people who came before us, fighting this fight, I was here, screaming at the top of my lungs.”

“Honestly, I just wanted to take it easy for the rest of the day. I didn’t want to hear Spoony preach about how hard it is to be black, or my father preach about how young people lack pride and integrity, making us easy targets.”

“I begin almost every day the same way: Ma’s voice in my head, telling me what I needed to do, what I needed to think about, how I needed to act.”

“It wasn’t about loyalty. It was about him standing up for what he believed in. And I wanted to be my dad’s son. Someone who believed a better world was possible––someone who stood up for it.”

“I didn’t need ROTC. But I did it, and I did it good, because my dad was pretty much making me. He’s one of those dudes who feels like there’s no better opportunity for a black boy in this country than to join the army.”

“I didn’t even want to think about the preacher preaching about how God is in control of it all, or my mother, my sweet, sweet mother caught in the middle of it all. The referee who blows the whistle but is way too nice to call foul on anyone. That’s her. She just wants me to be okay. That’s it and that’s all.”

“Sometimes, when people get treated as less than human, the best way to help them feel better is to simply treat them as human. Not as victims. Just you as you.”

“I did not want to be a hero. I did not want to make any of what had happened in the last week about me. There was a guy who’d just spent six days in the hospital because the guy who’d been my personal hero for four years had put him there.”

“I wanted him to know that I saw him, a guy who, even with a tear-streaked face, seemed to have two tiny smiles framing his eyes like parentheses . . . to remind the world he was alive.”

“My father was the model of discipline and courage. Sure, he was stern, and sometimes judgmental, but I always felt like he meant well.”

“Even if they didn’t know Rashad . . . they couldn’t just ignore what happened to him; they couldn’t walk away. They were probably afraid, too.”

“I watched the clips on the news . . . and realized that my brother, in fact, was the most courageous man I knew, because Selma had nothing to do with him. Well, one could argue that it did, a little bit. But he was doing it for us. All of us.”

“PUSH! If you don’t, someone else will. LIFT! If you don’t, someone else will. Faster faster, faster, faster FASTER!”

“I could be all the way across the country in California and I’d still be white, cops and everyone else would still see me as just a ‘regular kid,’ an ‘All-American’ boy. ‘Regular.’ ‘All American.’ White.”

“If I didn’t want the violence to remain, I had to do . . . a lot more than just say the right things and not say the wrong things.”

“Had our hearts really become so numb . . . Who am I if I need to be shocked back into my best self?”