“Choose whatever box you like, Mike. Just don't put me in one, son. Believe me, I won't fit.”
― Nikki Grimes, quote from Bronx Masquerade
“You have to take people one at a time, check out what's in their head and heart before you judge.”
― Nikki Grimes, quote from Bronx Masquerade
“At the edge of heartbreak, we both take a leap into the unknown...That's when we see it, a buoy callled friendship.”
― Nikki Grimes, quote from Bronx Masquerade
“Love is not me being who you want. Your definition is a whirlpool trying to suck me in and I'm drowning. Don't you see?...It's time...Time you stop telling me who to be, how to live. This is my portrait. You chose your canvas. Let me choose mine.”
― Nikki Grimes, quote from Bronx Masquerade
“Only the wind shatters the silence. I have been here before choking in solitude.”
― Nikki Grimes, quote from Bronx Masquerade
“If a dream is in your heart, you never lose it.”
― Nikki Grimes, quote from Bronx Masquerade
“The fact is that you are more comfortable with myth than man.”
― Nikki Grimes, quote from Bronx Masquerade
“So don't tell me that I can't fit in. My heart beats like a talking drum.”
― Nikki Grimes, quote from Bronx Masquerade
“Forget who I really am, who I really want to be.”
― Nikki Grimes, quote from Bronx Masquerade
“Jealousy is a waste of energy...focus on what I have, not what I don't.”
― Nikki Grimes, quote from Bronx Masquerade
“I'd pretend their words were water and let them roll off my back. Now, I'm nobody's duck, and their words stung a whole lot more than water.”
― Nikki Grimes, quote from Bronx Masquerade
“You laugh, rap my woody shell with wicked whispers shaped like knuckles, then toss me aside. Lucky for me, I don't bruise easily. Besides, you loss is someone else's gain for I am coconut, and the heart of me is sweeter than you know.”
― Nikki Grimes, quote from Bronx Masquerade
“I woke up this morning exhausted from hiding the me of me. So I stand here confiding there's more to Devon than jump shot and rim. I'm more than tall and lengthy of limb. I dare you to peep behind these eyes, discover the poet in tough-guy disguise. Don't call me Jump Shot. My name is surprise.”
― Nikki Grimes, quote from Bronx Masquerade
“He'll never do it again,' she swears, but he will because she'll let him. Now me? I've got no use for imitation love that packs a punch.”
― Nikki Grimes, quote from Bronx Masquerade
“Look around. Take the tour. Fear hangs on the wall and shame sometimes. Emotional dislocation too. But I am brave in my admission. Are you? When no one is looking, I check to see if anyone seems as scared as me, or lonely, or shy, or insecure. Is it just me? I'm not so sure. Is your heart an onion too? Show me yours, I'll show you mine we used to say. Your turn. Peel away.”
― Nikki Grimes, quote from Bronx Masquerade
“Do something about it, or shut up.”
― Nikki Grimes, quote from Bronx Masquerade
“The crashing sound of years lost shattered in her ears, and new fears emerged from the looking glass. Sometimes I wonder if she'll ever sing again.”
― Nikki Grimes, quote from Bronx Masquerade
“I'm an artist...The difference is that I don't tell anybody. I refuse to give them new reasons to laugh at me.”
― Nikki Grimes, quote from Bronx Masquerade
“The day she clips her way out of her cocoon, the only sound she plans to hear is a deafening cheer.”
― Nikki Grimes, quote from Bronx Masquerade
“The lack of goodness in the young gun's heart was oxygen to the fire, and so he burned for a good long while before I woke. The dream stoked my faith in the judgment and justice that will come someday or this afternoon soon. I turn up the collar of my white robe, relieved to know that God's got me covered 'cause I'm good, but not that good.”
― Nikki Grimes, quote from Bronx Masquerade
“Ready or not, I peer into your soul and dive deep... Your eyes don't like what I see. You don't want to be me. So you curse and smash the mirror which gets you what? A bit of blood , a handful of glass splinters, another source of pain.”
― Nikki Grimes, quote from Bronx Masquerade
Nikki Grimes
Born place: in New York City, New York, The United States
Born date October 20, 1950
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“i hardened under the last loss. it took something human out of me. i used to be so deeply emotional i’d crumble on demand. but now the water has made its exit. of course i care about the ones around me. i’m just struggling to show it. a wall is getting in the way. i used to dream of being so strong nothing could shake me. now. i am. so strong. that nothing shakes me. and all i dream is to soften.”
― Rupi Kaur, quote from The Sun and Her Flowers
“You’ll be surprised to see what can collect in a mattress over the months, over the years. Every day, every night of our lives, we’re leaving little bits of ourselves, flakes of this and that, behind. Where do they go, these bits and pieces of ourselves? Right through the sheets and into the mattress, that’s where! Pillows, too. It’s all the same. He”
― Raymond Carver, quote from Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?
“Transfixed by the bright gaze of a lizard, I become calm. This stone on which the lizard lies was under the sea when lizards first came into being, and now the flood is wearing it away, to return it once again into the oceans.”
― Peter Matthiessen, quote from The Snow Leopard
“Kat had her arms folded and her hair was tied in what girls call a topknot. Her skinny, bony face jutted out. With her tilted chin and dark eyebrows she seemed sharper, somehow, as if she was more in focus than other people round her, or more real. You couldn't help noticing her, whether you were looking for her or not.
Maybe that's what being pretty meant, I thought. ”
― Siobhan Dowd, quote from The London Eye Mystery
“They reminded me somehow of the peasants in a book by Steinbeck: they were of the city, but they dressed like peasants, they looked like peasants, and they talked like peasants. Their cows were motor-driven milk floats; their tools were mop and pail and kneeling pad; their farms a forest of steel and concrete. In spite of the hairgrips and headscarves, they had their own kind of dignity. They”
― E.R. Braithwaite, quote from To Sir, With Love
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The True Believer: T...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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