Ntozake Shange Quotes

On this page you can find the TOP of Ntozake Shange's best quotes! We hope you will find some sayings from Playwright Ntozake Shange's in our collection, which will inspire you to new achievements! There are currently 26 quotes on this page collected since October 18, 1948! Share our collection of quotes with your friends on social media so that they can find something to inspire them!
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  • And this is for Colored girls who have considered suicide, but are moving to the ends of their own rainbows.

    Girl   Suicide   Moving  
    "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide". Choreopoem by Ntozake Shange, 1976.
  • I write for young girls of color, for girls who don’t even exist yet, so that there is something there for them when they arrive. I can only change how they live, not how they think.

    Girl   Writing   Thinking  
    "Back at you". Interview with Rebecca Carroll, www.motherjones.com. January 1995.
  • nice is such a rip-off.

    Nice   Rip   Niceness  
    Marvin Cohen, J. Gilhooley, M. Pinero, David Rabe, Ntozake Shange (1986). “Plays from the New York Shakespeare Festival”, Broadway Play Publishing
  • I'm a firm believer that language and how we use language determines how we act, and how we act then determines our lives and other people's lives.

    People   Use   Brilliant  
  • Where there is a woman there is magic. If there is a moon falling from her mouth, she is a woman who knows her magic, who can share or not share her powers. A woman with a moon falling from her mouth, roses between her legs and tiaras of Spanish moss, this woman is a consort of the spirits.

    Inspiring   Fall   Moon  
    Ntozake Shange (2010). “Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo: A Novel”, p.9, Macmillan
  • When I die, I will no be guilty of having left a generation of girls behind thinking that anyone can tend to their emotional health other than themselves.

  • somebody/ anybody sing a black girl's song bring her out to know herself to know you but sing her rhythms carin/ struggle/ hard times sing her song of life she's been dead so long closed in silence so long she doesn't know the sound of her own voice her infinite beauty she's half-notes scattered without rhythm/ no tune sing her sighs sing the song of her possibilities sing a righteous gospel let her be born let her be born & handled warmly.

    Girl   Song   Struggle  
    Ntozake Shange (2010). “For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf”, p.4, Simon and Schuster
  • I've never thought of leaving the South, never.

    Leaving   South  
    Ntozake Shange, Ifa Bayeza (2010). “Some Sing, Some Cry: A Novel”, p.176, Macmillan
  • I started writing because there's an absence of things I was familiar with or that I dreamed about. One of my senses of anger is related to this vacancy - a yearning I had as a teenager. . .and when I get ready to write, I think I'm trying to fill that. . .

  • Creation is everything you do. Make something.

    Ntozake Shange (2010). “Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo: A Novel”, p.58, Macmillan
  • i usedta live in the world really be in the world free & sweet talkin good mornin & thank-you & nice day uh huh i cant now i cant be nice to nobody nice is such a rip-off regular beauty & a smile in the street is just a set-up

    Sweet   Nice   Rip  
  • my spirit is too ancient to understand the separation of soul & gender

    Ntozake Shange (2010). “For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf”, p.45, Simon and Schuster
  • our dreams draw blood from old sores.

    Dream   Blood   Draws  
    Ntozake Shange (1985). “Spell number seven”
  • The slaves who were ourselves had known terror intimately, confused sunrise with pain, & accepted indifference as kindness.

    Ntozake Shange (2010). “Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo: A Novel”, p.36, Macmillan
  • Novels allow me to create a whole world.

    World   Novel   Whole  
  • one thing I don’t need is any more apologies i got sorry greetin me at my front door you can keep yrs i don’t know what to do wit em they don’t open doors or bring the sun back they don’t make me happy or get a mornin paper didn’t nobody stop usin my tears to wash cars cuz a sorry.

    Ntozake Shange, “'Sorry'”
  • Right now being born a girl is to be born threatened.

    Girl   Women   Born  
  • Our society allows people to be absolutely neurotic and totally out of touch with their feelings and everyone else's feelings, and yet be very respectable.

  • i found god in myself and i loved her i loved her fiercely

    Love   God   Healing  
  • When words & manners leave you no space for yourself make very personal very clear & your obstructions will join you or disappear.

  • I'm committed to the idea that one of the few things human beings have to offer is the richness of unconscious and conscious emotional responses to being alive. ... The kind of esteem that's given to brightness/smartness obliterates average people or slow learners from participating fully in human life, particularly technical and intellectual life. But you cannot exclude any human being from emotional participation.

  • in our ordinaryness we are most bizarre.

  • Being alive and being a woman is all I got, but being colored is a metaphysical dilemma I haven't conquered yet.

  • I am gonna write poems til i die and when i have gotten outta this body i am gonna hang round in the wind and knock over everybody who got their feet on the ground.

    Writing   Wind   Feet  
  • I hit my head against the wall because I don't want to know all the terrible things that I know about. I don't want to feel all these wretched things, but they're in me already. If I don't get rid of them, I'm not ever going to feel anything else.

    Wall   Want   Terrible  
  • Where there is a woman there is magic.

    Women   Magic   Tiaras  
    Ntozake Shange (2010). “Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo: A Novel”, p.9, Macmillan
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We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 26 quotes from the Playwright Ntozake Shange, starting from October 18, 1948! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!
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