lightning

42 Quotes from The Autobiography of Malcolm X

couldreads

Page numbers in parens. 

ON PATIENCE:

“I learned early that crying out in protest could accomplish things.” [8]

“The more I began to stay away from home and visit people and steal from the stores, the more aggressive I became in my inclinations. I never wanted to wait for anything.” [15]

“I have always felt…that the black ‘leader’ whom white men consider to be ‘responsible’ is invariably the black ‘leader’ who never gets any results.” [389]

ON WHITE PEOPLE:

“I don’t care how nice one is to you, the thing you must always remember is that almost never does he really see you as he sees himself, as he sees his own kind.” [28]

“…the collective white man had acted like a devil in virtually every contact he had with the world’s collective non-white man.” [181]

“For the white man to ask the black man if he hates him is…

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For Those of you who are Scared

I’m scared too.

The stress is suffocating, 

the headaches are beginning to feel endless and determined.

As if they were 13 year old olympic gymnasts with something to prove.

I just don’t understand how one can have such a good and bad thing at the same time.

Not up until a few months ago did I come to really know what people meant by ying-yang.

Ask me what it is, and I will tell you to look at me. To take a real good, and hard 

look

at 

me.

I’m screaming in my head because I can’t seem to scavenge for enough energy in my body to make it audible.

Everything seems compromising.

So, all I think about is how tomorrow I may not be so lucky as to be breathing.

I’m standing in the middle of my room,

half naked;

physically vulnerable, as if all I want to do is make my outsides match my insides.

The carpet on my feet feels so imposing and the walls are doing what they do best, 

collapsing.

I guess, I’ve always been really good at being just where I am right now.

I’ve come to an absurd and too tangible of a realization that all of the overwhelming, sickening, and uncertain events of my existence are exactly where they should be.

So I’m scared.

Let nobody invalidate your fear, because after all, you are the one standing in the middle of that room 

half naked,

vulnerable,

and compromised.

Let me be scared until you make it stop.

Make me feel what you feel, 

and I promise that I will put my fear away.

Make it stop;

and I promise, 

I will put my fear away.

 

 

The Destructive Couple

On those nights when lonely invited himself into my home, and not even the tv could entertain me, you sneakily joined him.
You two worked your mischief, you found the water faucets in my eyes and opened them with the intention to create a flood.
You moved on to grab the ropes of our memories and you tied them so tightly around my neck, that I can now say that I know what it feels like to almost die from asphyxia.
After being soaked in the flood of tears and breathless from the memories of what we once were, you continued without mercy.
You replayed our love on the screen of my brain, and somehow you managed to make it HD TV. The type of HD where you feel as if you were right in the scene.
You showed me how well your hands knew there way around my body…
As if you had mapped it out so meticulously,
you took care to climb all the mountains and visit each valley.
You swam through my oceans
And at one point, you were the explorer I had never allowed myself to be.
You saw the parts of me that not even I had enough courage to walk through.

As you hold me down with the intention of murder, I kind of still want you.
If this isn’t fucked Up, then I don’t know what is.

I just hope that you and lonely get bored or at least tired, find your way to the front door, and never remember my address.

Crazy

“It’s going to be OKAY.”

“It’s GOING to be okay.”

“It’s going to be okay.”

x3

x4

x5

You’re going crazy.

You’re going CRAZY.

CRAZY.

CRAZY.