Quotes About Harlem

Growing up in Harlem, I was always in the parks playing ball.

Nonresidents have a tendency to rush their visits to Harlem.

I had seen the photographs of Harlem in its glory days, stylish men in bespoke suits, women so well dressed that they'd put the models in 'Vogue' to shame. I knew that Harlemites loved to dance, to pray, and to eat.

The best of humanity's recorded history is a creative balance between horrors endured and victories achieved, and so it was during the Harlem Renaissance.

Harlem is a stage. It's like its own planet, from the way we dress to the swag in the way we walk and talk.

When Barack Obama got elected, I remember being in Harlem specifically. I remember watching that whole part of town just swell. People walked the streets, but it wasn't a riot - it wasn't mayhem. It was a unified feeling of euphoria.

By 1916, as Madam Walker herself was developing more assertive views on race, she was becoming eager to assume her place alongside Harlem's famous, influential and intriguing residents.

In the 1940s, boxing was a mainstream sport and deeply ingrained the fabric of Harlem. Joe Louis ruled the world, but the local icon was Sugar Ray Robinson.

Thinking back to boyhood days, I remember the bright sun on Harlem streets, the easy rhythms of black and brown bodies, the sounds of children streaming in and out of red brick tenements.

'Luke Cage' is about a reluctant superhero who lives in the shadows in Harlem. He has to decide if he's going to step up and fight for the heart of the city and defend the people against Cornell 'Cottonmouth' Stokes, my character, who kinda wants to keep everything in order and intact. I'm the criminal element in the story.

'Harlem: The Unmaking of a Ghetto' is a surprise and a fresh way of looking at Harlem, connecting the black district with the architecture of its historical past.

In Harlem, black was white. You had rights that could not be denied you; you had privileges, protected by law. And you had money. Everybody in Harlem had money. It was a land of plenty.

Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.

The one thing you'll notice when you're walking through Harlem is every single passing car is playing different music and there's also music that's being played out of windows.

In Africa, you have no clean water, but you have good food options. In Harlem, everyone can shower and get fresh water, but you often have bad food options.

Harlem is filled with moments of history.

We had the skirts with the slits up the side, sort of tough, sort of Spanish Harlem cool, but sweet too.

The masses of Harlem get a good deal of pleasure out of things far too simple for most other folks.

New Yorkers and people visiting New York from the world over go to the night-clubs of Harlem and dance to such jazz music as can be heard nowhere else; and they get an exhilaration impossible to duplicate.

To many, especially among coloured people, a Harlem night-club is a den of iniquity, where the Devil holds high revel. The fact is that the average night-club is as orderly as many a Sunday-school picnic has been.

Tom Wolfe, of all people, was the first person who ever told me about rap music. He liked to go to Harlem and the Bronx to watch the crews battle it out, and he was writing rap lyrics of his own.

When we did Diplomats music, it was all genuine, and I think that's why people love it so much, because they seen a group of kids from Harlem that had almost nothing come up to be platinum-selling artists, and people rode that wave with us.

I got Sonny up to Harlem, and we started street playin' in New York. We did that for three or four years and survived. We brought it back to the streets again.

Harlem is really a melting pot for a lot of different people. When you look at Harlem - and I lived there almost five years - most of the people who live in Harlem are transplants. They migrate to Harlem from another place.