Quotes About Understanding

For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.

I understand the fans, I respect them. I'll accept the whistling and booing. It's up to me to transform that all into applause.

White people are potential humans - they haven't evolved yet.

Both read the Bible day and night, but thou read black where I read white.

I don't find anything black and white; I find grey in every person, and that is what excites me.

For goodness sake, will they hear, will white people hear what we are trying to say? Please, all we are asking you to do is to recognize that we are humans, too.

Shakespeare - I was very influenced - still am - by Shakespeare. I couldn't believe that a white man in the 16th century could so know my heart.

Sure, I look like a white man. But my heart is as black as anyone's here.

This is going to sound ridiculous, but I remember watching 'Boyz n the Hood,' and there is a scene where Cuba Gooding, Jr. gets pressed against a car by a police officer, and he starts crying because it's so humiliating. I remember thinking in that moment that I could totally identify with him, and I'm a little white kid from Canada.

Whenever someone like a plumber or a mechanic tries to explain something technical to me, I listen for about three seconds before it all just becomes white noise, like Charlie Brown's teacher.

No one ever talks about the moment you found that you were white. Or the moment you found out you were black. That's a profound revelation. The minute you find that out, something happens. You have to renegotiate everything.

Here I am, a black man with a white man's heart. In the end, that's what God wants us to do. He wants us to help, and he wants us to share.

You know, one of the things I like about this world, or at least I like about the way we're presenting this world, is these issues are terribly complicated - not nearly as black and white as we're led to believe.

Some white people hate black people, and some white people love black people, some black people hate white people, and some black people love white people. So you see it's not an issue of black and white, it's an issue of Lovers and Haters.

The white people of the South are the greatest minority in this nation. They deserve consideration and understanding instead of the persecution of twisted propaganda.

Relations between black and white would be greatly improved if we were more accepting of our fears and our feelings and more vocal about it.

As Black people, we're very used to empathizing with the world through white people's eyes, because they're the protagonists. I know what it's like to look at the world and empathize with Superman because I spent my whole life doing that.

I think it's very insulting to say, 'White people don't understand.' What are you talking about? You're part of the problem then if you're... speaking and labeling all white people, saying they don't understand the issue or saying they can't relate. That's really not giving people much credit, is it?

My characters make incomprehensible decisions until you stand in their shoes. Then it makes more sense. Life is very rarely black and white, and most people are trying to do their best. I try not to judge.

It is not, nor will it ever be, white people's responsibility to teach black children our unique American history.

It's not my job to judge or assess. I think single, black, white, married - people are doing the best they can.

How can we bridge the gap between... African-American males and white cops?

I don't think any of us that are white can ever fully understand what it's like to be a black person in America today.

As a person of color, I was trained from very early on to see 'Leave It to Beaver,' 'Gilligan's Island,' or 'Hamlet' and look beyond the specifics of it - whether it be silly white people on an island or a family living in Nowheres or a Danish person - to leap past the specifics and find the human truths that have to do with me.