Quotes from Ta-Nehisi Coates

In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body - it is heritage.

For nearly a century and a half, this country deluded itself into thinking that its greatest calamity, the Civil War, had nothing to do with one of its greatest sins, enslavement. It deluded itself in this manner despite available evidence to the contrary.

I think 'Dear White People,' the show, is a tremendous artistic achievement. It's always hinting that there is something beyond the pleading and wokeness, something that the show's more militant characters can't see.

I think at places like 'Slate' or the magazine where I work, there was a really poor record of hiring African-American writers. It was really that simple. And I think with the proliferation of the Internet and Internet media, it has been a little harder to maintain that gatekeeper position.

You can't tolerate anybody attempting to threaten or intimidate your body. You must respond with force.

To be black in the Baltimore of my youth was to be naked before the elements of the world.

It is often said that Trump has no real ideology, which is not true - his ideology is white supremacy, in all its truculent and sanctimonious power.

Throughout his eight years in office, Barack Obama endured a campaign of illegitimacy waged either by pluralities or majorities of the Republican party. Donald Trump rooted his candidacy in that campaign. It's fairly obvious.

From last century's 'The Birth of a Nation' to this century's 'Gods and Generals,' Hollywood has likely done more than any other American institution to obstruct a truthful apprehension of the Civil War and, thus, modern America's very origins.

I think human societies tend to be problematic.

What did I know of loving anything, beyond a longing, beyond being biased in one woman's direction.

I feel some need to represent where I'm from. But ultimately, I think my only real responsibility is to - as much as possible - interrogate my own truths. This is to say not merely writing what I think is true, but using the writing to turn that alleged truth over and over, to stress-test it, in the aim of producing something readable.

When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse.

I feel sorry for people who only know comic books through movies. I really do.

I have never read 'To Kill A Mockingbird.'

I was 24 when Samori was born. His mom was 23.

I think the body is the ultimate thing. The soul and mind are part of the body. I don't think there is anything outside of that. Your physical self is who you are. Some people feel that that is reductionist, but I don't think it is. It's just true.

It is said that Obama speaks 'professorially,' a fact that understates the quickness and agility of his mind.

Eddie Conway is central to my first memories. My parents used to take me to, when it was open, the Baltimore city penitentiary to see Eddie Conway - I was talking to my dad about this recently - from the time I might have been one or two years old. I mean, literally, my first memories are of black men in jail, specifically of Eddie Conway.

There's a kind of optimism specifically within Christianity about the world - about whose side God is on. Well, I didn't have any of that in my background. I had physicality and chaos.

I was about 13 or 14 when I heard Malcolm X's speech 'Message to the Grass Roots.'

In comics, you have to imagine what happens. I really loved it; I loved collecting. I loved following the adventures and figuring out what was going to happen next. I was a huge X-Men fan; I was a huge Spider-Man fan, and, to large degree, I remain one. It's literature for me; it's art.

Well into the 20th century, black people spoke of their flight from Mississippi in much the same manner as their runagate ancestors had.

American myths have never been colorless.