So you're just moving along and suddenly you get this moment that breaks your ability to continue, and yet you continue. I… — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
For instance, if you're a black guy and you got pulled over, and you didn't know that any other black men were… — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
Each of these failures for me is a failure of communication, via a mode of communication that can be violent or meant… — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
The world is wrong. You can't put the past behind you. It's buried in you; it's turned your flesh into its own… — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
I think the idea that the systemic problems in a society lead to illness is important to know. We shouldn't be separating… — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
I think words are the thing that either triumphs for you, in your desire to communicate something, or fails. I love language… — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
I also found it funny to think about blackness as the second person. That was just sort of funny. Not the first… — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
I think having a term for a condition that is prevalent is useful, because then people understand it as something not particular… — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
One of the things that I think about is: How do you make moments that float, transparent? Moments that could just float… — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
People expect black women to be angry, irrationally so, without reason. They think we are animals and we go around like the… — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
In the future, we've forgotten it. It's disappointing to find out that the past is the present is the future. Nobody wants… — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
I was at Yale and I said to the poet Elizabeth Alexander, "I'm interested in the ways in which black health seems… — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
How our availability, our showing up, our presence, leaves us open to that violence. I think it's a question of language, as… — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
I think that one of the positions we have taken around the question of race, is that we already know. We know.… — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
I always took note of them, because I think if you're in the black or brown body, you're negotiating them all the… — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
I think music, like writing, can be a mirror. Can turn back onto the listener, the viewer, the reader, an experience that… — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
I was really interested in the fact that blacks have high blood pressure, heart disease, and diabetes at a higher percentage than… — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
When you achieve it fully, you create something that's transparent - that people can move into and through their own experiences. As… — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
I think of the described dynamics as a fluid negotiation. I don't think these specific interactions can happen to the black or… — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
I don't think people want to look at problems. They want a continuous narrative, an optimistic narrative. A narrative that says there's… — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
I don't know about forgiving, but it's an "I'm still here." And it's not just because I have nowhere else to go. It's because… — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
So you're just moving along and suddenly you get this moment that breaks your ability to continue, and yet you continue. I wanted those… — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
“because white men can't police their imagination black people are dying” — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
Whereas if you were writing an op-ed piece or an essay, somebody would be asking, "What's your point?" With poetry you can stay in… — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
Because white men can’t police their imaginations, black men are dying. — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
I asked a lot of friends and people I'd meet, "Can you tell me a story of a micro-aggression that happened to you in… — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
“The past is a life sentence, a blunt instrument aimed at tomorrow.” — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
The subject who speaks is situated in relation to the other. This privilege of the other ceases to be incomprehensible once we admit that… — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
Where is the safest place when that place / must be someplace other than in the body? — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
