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Claudia Rankine QUOTES

Claudia Rankine QUOTES

1 " And as light as the rain seems, it still rains down on you. "

― Claudia Rankine

2 " Or one meaning of here is “in this world, in this life, on earth. In this place or position, indicating the presence of,” or in other words, I am here. It also means to hand something to somebody—Here you are. Here, he said to her. Here both recognizes and demands recognition. I see you, or here, he said to her. In order for something to be handed over a hand must extend and a hand must receive. We must both be here in this world in this life in this place indicating the presence of. "

― Claudia Rankine , Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric

3 " -(I)n memory, remorse wraps the self. "

― Claudia Rankine , The End of the Alphabet

4 " Sad is one of those words that has given up its life for our country, it's been a martyr for the American dream, it's been neutralized, co-opted by our culture to suggest a tinge of discomfort that lasts the time it takes for this and then for that to happen, the time it takes to change a channel. But sadness is real because once it meant something real. It meant dignified, grave; it meant trustworthy; it meant exceptionally bad, deplorable, shameful; it meant massive, weighty, forming a compact body; it meant falling heavily; and it meant of a color: dark. It meant dark in color, to darken. It meant me. I felt sad. "

― Claudia Rankine , Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric

5 " In a taxi speeding uptown on the West Side Highway, I let my thoughts drift below the surface of the Hudson until it finally occurs to me that feelings fill the gaps created by the indirectness of experience. Though the experience is social, thoughts carry it into a singular space and it is this that causes the feelings of loneliness; or it is this that collides the feeling with the experience so that what is left is the solitude called loneliness. "

― Claudia Rankine , Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric

6 " Hey you —

All our fevered history won't instill insight,
won't turn a body conscious,
won't make that look
in the eyes say yes, though there is nothing

to solve

even as each moment is an answer. "

― Claudia Rankine , Citizen: An American Lyric

7 " It strikes me that what the attack on the World Trade Center stole from us is our willingness to be complex. Or what the attack on the World Trade Center revealed to us is that we were never complex. We might want to believe that we can condemn and we can love and we can condemn because we love our country, but that's too complex. "

― Claudia Rankine

8 " There is/no reasoning with need. "

― Claudia Rankine , The End of the Alphabet

9 " Not long ago you are in a room where someone asks the philosopher Judith Butler what makes language hurtful. You can feel everyone lean in. Our very being exposes us to the address of another, she answers. We suffer from the condition of being addressable. Our emotional openness, she adds, is carried by our addressability. Language navigates this. For so long you thought the ambition of racist language was to denigrate and erase you as a person. After considering Butler’s remarks, you begin to understand yourself as rendered hypervisible in the face of such language acts. Language that feels hurtful is intended to exploit all the ways that you are present. Your alertness, your openness, and your desire to engage actually demand your presence, your looking up, your talking back, and, as insane as it is, saying please. Standing outside the conference room, unseen by the two men waiting for the others to arrive, you hear one say to the other that being around black people is like watching a foreign film without translation. Because you will spend the next two hours around the round table that makes conversing easier, you consider waiting a few minutes before entering the room. "

― Claudia Rankine , Citizen: An American Lyric

10 " Not long ago you are in a room where someone asks the philosopher Judith Butler what makes language hurtful. Our very being exposes us to the address of another, she answers. We suffer from the condition of being addressable. Our emotional openness, she adds, is carried by our addressability. Language navigates this. Language that feels hurtful is intended to exploit all the ways that you are present. Your alertness, your openness, and your desire to engage actually demand your presence, your looking up, your talking back, and, as insane as it is, saying please. "

― Claudia Rankine , Citizen: An American Lyric

11 " Perhaps the most insidious and least understood form of segregation is that of the word. (Ralph Ellison) "

― Claudia Rankine , Citizen: An American Lyric

12 " What does a victorious or defeated black woman’s body in a historically white space look like? Serena and her big sister Venus Williams brought to mind Zora Neale Hurston’s “I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.” This appropriated line, stenciled on canvas by Glenn Ligon, who used plastic letter stencils, smudging oil sticks, and graphite to transform the words into abstractions, seemed to be ad copy for some aspect of life for all black bodies. "

― Claudia Rankine , Citizen: An American Lyric

13 " Nobody notices, only you've known,

you're not sick, not crazy,
not angry, not sad--

It's just this, you're injured. "

― Claudia Rankine , Citizen: An American Lyric

14 " Sitting there staring at the closed garage door you are reminded that a friend once told you there exists the medical term--John Henryism--for people exposed to stresses stemming from racism. They achieve themselves to death trying to dodge the buildup of erasure. "

― Claudia Rankine , Citizen: An American Lyric

15 " A friend writes of the numbing effects of humming and it returns you to your own sigh. It's no longer audible. You've grown into it. Some call it aging--an internalized liquid smoke blurring ordinary ache. "

― Claudia Rankine , Citizen: An American Lyric

16 " 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 cupboard. Not everything remembered is useful but it all comes from the world to be stored in you. Who did what to whom on which day? Who said that? She said what? What did he just do? Did she really just say that? He said what? What did she do? Did I hear what I think I heard? Did that just come out of my mouth, his mouth, your mouth? Do you remember when you sighed? "

― Claudia Rankine , Citizen: An American Lyric

17 " How difficult is it for one body to feel the injustice wheeled at another? Are the tensions, the recognitions, the disappointments, and the failures that exploded in the riots too foreign? "

― Claudia Rankine , Citizen: An American Lyric

18 " How to care for the injured body,

the kind of body that can't hold
the content it is living? "

― Claudia Rankine , Citizen: An American Lyric

19 " Memory is a tough place. You were there. "

― Claudia Rankine , Citizen: An American Lyric

20 " Another friend tells you you have to learn not to absorb the world. She says sometimes she can hear her own voice saying silently to whomever--you are saying this thing and I am not going to accept it. Your friend refuses to carry what doesn't belong to her.

You take in things you don't want all the time. The second you hear or see some ordinary moment, all its intended targets, all the meanings behind the retreating seconds, as far as you are able to see, come into focus. "

― Claudia Rankine , Citizen: An American Lyric