Jason Reynolds Quotes

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.

You can't run away from who you are, but what you can do is run toward who you want to be.

Had our hearts really become so numb that we needed dead bodies in order to feel the beat of compassion in our chests? Who am I if I need to be shocked back into my best self?

ANOTHER THING ABOUT THE RULES They weren't meant to be broken. They were meant for the broken to follow.

People always love people more when they're dead.

but if blood inside you is on the inside of someone else, you never want to see it on the outside of them

Dreams don't have timelines, deadlines, and aren't always in straight lines.

History can only teach its lesson if it is remembered.

AND YOU KNOW it's weird to know a person you don't know and at the same time not know a person you know, you know?

MY MOTHER USED TO SAY, I know you're young, gotta get it out, but just remember, when you're walking in the nighttime, make sure the nighttime ain't walking into you.

Trouble is, you can't run away from yourself." Coach snatched the towel from his shoulder, folded into a perfect square, and set it in the space between us. "Unfortunately," he said, "ain't nobody that fast.

Little. Don't ever let someone call your life, your dreams, little. Hear me?

When bad things happen we can usually look up and see the moon, big and bright, shining over us. That always made me feel better. Like there's something up there beaming down on us in the dark.

Because racism was alive and real as shit. It was everywhere and all mixed up in everything, and the only people who said it wasn’t, and the only people who said, “Don’t talk about it” were white. Well, stop lying. That’s what I wanted to tell those people. Stop lying. Stop denying. That’s why I was marching. Nothing was going to change unless we did something about it. We! White people!

Sometimes, when people get treated as less than human, the best way to help them feel better is to simply treat them as human. Not as victims. Just you as you. Rashad Butler, before all this.

ALIVE = A VEIL

I wanted him to know that I saw him, a guy who, even with a tear-streaked face, seemed to have two tiny smiles framing his eyes like parentheses, a guy on the ground pantomiming his death to remind the world he was alive.

I SWEAR SOMETIMES it feels like God be flashing photos of his children, awkward, amazing, tucked in his wallet for the world to see. But the world don't wanna see no kids, and God ain't no pushy parent so he just folds and snaps us shut.

Nobody says the words anymore, but somehow the violence still remains. If I didn’t want the violence to remain, I had to do a hell of a lot more than just say the right things and not say the wrong things.

Buck laughed, and laughter, when it's loud and heavy and aimed at you, I think can feel just as bad as a bullet's bang." -Will

...death isn't bad. It's not. It's just that life is so good. So damn good that you just wanna hold on to it, and everybody in it. But we can't. But what we can do, is appreciate it more. Y'know, smell the flowers.

Your dream is the mole behind your ear, that chip in your front tooth, your freckles. It's the thing that makes you special, but not the thing that makes you great. The courage in trying, the passion in living, and the acknowledgement and appreciation of the beauty happening around you does that.

Shawn turned back toward me, eyes dull from death but shining from tears, finally spoke to me. Just two words, like a joke he'd been saving. YOU COMING?

The most addictive drug known to America. Racism. It causes wealth, an inflated sense of self, and hallucinations.

ANAGRAM is when you take a word and rearrange the letters to make another word. And sometimes the words are still somehow connected ex: CANOE = OCEAN. Same letters, different words, somehow still make sense together, like brothers.

How do you small-talk your father when "dad" is a language so foreign that whenever you try to say it, it feels like you got a third lip and a second tongue?

We can't attack a thing we don't know. That's dangerous. And...foolish. It would be like trying to chop down a tree from the top of it. If we understand how the tree works, how the trunk and roots are where the power lies, and how gravity is on our side, we can attack it, each of us with small axes, and change the face of the the forest.

AND EVEN THOUGH his face was wet with tears he wasn't supposed to cry when he was alive, I couldn't see him as anything less than my brother, my favorite, my only.

People always love people more when they are dead.

Shawn's dead. So strange to say. So sad. But I guess not surprising, which I guess is even stranger, and even sadder.

There will come a time when we will love humanity, when we will gain the courage to fight for an equitable society for our beloved humanity, knowing, intelligently, that when we fight for humanity, we are fighting for ourselves.

You, my dear, should spend more time in a library. It's not just a hiding place, but also the place where the chases happen.

I FELT LIKE CRYING which felt like another person trapped behind my face tiny fists punching the backs of my eyes feet kicking my throat at the spot where the swallow starts. Stay put, I whispered to him, Stay strong, I whispered to me. Because crying is against The Rules.

But if the blood inside you is on the inside of someone else, you never want to see it on the outside of them.

A BROKEN HEART killed my dad. That's why my mother always said. And as a kid I always figured his heart was forreal broken like an arm or a toy or the middle drawer.

In 2012, in the United Kingdom, the number of people (regardless of race) shot and killed by police officers: 1 In 2013, in the United Kingdom, the number of times police officers fired guns in the line of duty/the number of people fatally shot: 3/0 In the United States, in the seven year period ending in 2012, a white police officer killed a black person nearly two times a week. “I’m not much of a talker,” she finished up. “You know that. But I know numbers. The numbers don’t lie, kids. The numbers always tell a story.

At sixteen I though Iwould've made it by now. Now I'm making up what making it means as i go.

...nobody owes you anything, so when you get something, be appreciative.

Like I was holding my breath. Maybe I was. Maybe I was hoping I could give some back to Shawn.

Because for something to make you feel tough, you gotta be a little bit scared of it at first. Then you gotta beat it." -Ghost

I do believe we can do better, be better. But we can't hide behind fear. We can't tuck truth between the cushions of comfort. We have to deal with it, really confront it, so that our children can live with a lot less weight. We owe it to them.

One thing I am now certain of is that this road less traveled has in fact been traveled by far more suckers than you think. All of us out here, slumped over wearing weird fake broken smiles, trying to avoid the truth: That we all have road rage.

Weird talking to my dad like he was a stranger even though we hugged like family.

Just remember, when you're walking in the nighttime, make sure the nighttime ain't walking into you.

But you know how death is. Your body goes but your ideas don't. Your impact lingers on even when it's poisonous. Some bodies get put into the ground and daisies bloom. Others encourage the sprouting of weeds. Weeds that work to strangle whatever's living, and growing, around them.

There are lazy, hardworking, wise, unwise, harmless, and harmful individuals of every race, but no racial group is better or worse than another racial group in any way.

THE INVENTION OF THE RULES ain't come from my brother, his friends, my dad, my uncle, the guys outside, the hustlers and shooters, and definitely not from me.

...and even though he said we were telling secrets that we were all going to keep, I had learned a long time ago that adults played by different rules.

If only is what's circling in my mind every morning before I breathe in beauty and breathe out bad decisions; If only is the cool breeze before I spin the world apart.

in the mirror my face sagged, like sadness was trying to pull the skin off

We had been texting for exactly thirteen minutes, asking random questions, trying to figure out if we knew any of the same people, or if we liked the same kind of music--the usual interview process you go through when you're trying to get the job as boyfriend.

And sometimes,” he continued while flipping another one, “I can lose and lose and lose and I don’t know why. But there’s nothing I can do but just keep flipping the cards. Eventually, I’ll win again. As long as you got cards to keep turning, you’re fine. Now, that’s life,” he said, pushing another hand I won over to me.

Not like KKK racist," she said. "I don't think most people think they're racist. But every time something like this happens, you could, like you said, say, 'Not my problem.' You could say, 'It's a one-time thing.' Every time it happened.

Science says the races are biologically equal so if they're not in society, the only reason why can be racism.

Best to become invisible in times like these. Everybody knows that.

The sound you hear in your head, the one people call ears ringing, sounds less like a bell, and more like a flatline.

Show you that you can’t run away from who you are, but what you can do is run toward who you want to be.

Buck pressed his finger to my chest like he was pushing an elevator button. The L button. But you ain't got it in you, Will, he said, cocky. Your brother did, but you- you don't.

IS IT POSSIBLE for a huge to peel back skin of time, the toughened and raw bits, the irritated and irritating dry spots, the parts that bleed?

So this was about you saving somebody, huh? Yeah, well, let me ask you something, Super Hero... Who’s gonna save you?

I felt good. I felt like, somehow, we were all winning.

Like, for me, the best way to describe it is, I got a lot of scream inside.

Bullies should be snitched on, especially if you don’t feel like you can back them down.

our dreams could be as far away as forever or as close as lunchtime.

If people aren't careful, they can be tricked into believing a big deal, is a done deal. Like there's no more fight left. No reason to keep pushing. That freedom is an actual destination.

This is a roll call! SEAN BELL! Then she followed with “Absent again today! OSCAR GRANT! Absent again today! REKIA BOYD! Absent again today! RAMARLEY GRAHAM!” She paused, and at that point the rest of us knew exactly what to do. “Absent again today!” “AIYANA JONES!” “Absent again today!” “FREDDIE GRAY!” “Absent again today!” “MICHAEL BROWN!” “Absent again today!” “TAMIR RICE!” “Absent again today!” “ERIC GARNER!” “Absent again today!” “TARIKA WILSON!” “Absent again today!” And Spoony kept feeding Berry the papers, one after another, as she continued to read down the list of unarmed black people killed by the police.

To know the past is to know the present. To know the present is to know yourself.

And you know it's weird to know a person you don't know and at the same time not know a person you know, you know?" -Will

MAYBE THERE'S SOMETHING INVISBLE trying to eat all of us as if we are beef.

When it comes to my dream, the way I like to describe it is that it's a rabid beast that found me when I was young

PEOPLE ALWAYS SAID he was taught to do good but doing bad was in his blood. And there's that nighttime Mom always be talking about. It'll snatch your teaching from you, put a gun in your hand, a grumble in your gut, and some sharp in your teeth.

Segregationists are haters. Like, real haters. People who hate you for not being like them. Assimilationists are people who like you, but only with quotation marks. Like…“ like” you. Meaning, they “like” you because you’re like them. And then there are antiracists. They love you because you’re like you.

Maybe you're eighteen and plan to make your first million by twenty-five (it's not impossible). Or maybe you're eighteen and plan to make it to twenty-one (it's not impossible, nor is twenty-two twenty-three twenty-four).

Because if it did- if it disappeared, if the voices vanished and you were no longer overtaken by the taunts of your own potential, no longer blinded by a perfect vision of your purpose, no longer engorged with passion- what would happen?

Paul'd gotten it all wrong. Becoming a cop would not make him a hero- but what kind of cop he became could have.

Thank you, young people. I wish I could name you all. But I'd rather you name yourselves.

Racist ideas cause people to look at an innocent Black face and see a criminal.

And then . . . BOOM!

Another thing about the rules They weren't meant to be broken. They were meant for the broken to follow" -Will

Mr. Ray had no problems opening the door, but he just couldn't close it, as my dad would say.

What it was like to love something enough to do anything to come back to it.

You can't be out there saving the world when your neighborhood ain't event straight.

Pretended like yellow tape was some kind of neighborhood flag that don't nobody wave but always be flapping in the wind.

And I'll never go asleep again believing that touching them or anything of his will lead to an arm around my neck. But it feels like an arm around my neck, wrenching, just thinking about how I'll never go to sleep again believing him or believing he will eventually come home, because he won't, and now I guess I should love him more, like he's my favorite, which is hard to do because he was my only brother, and already my favorite.

It all just depends. Some say on skill. Some say on will. Some say on luck. Some say on buck. Some say on race. Some say on face. Some say on Sunday God got a mighty, might plan. Nobody really knows what i depends on, but everybody knows it depends.

Both the segregationists and the assimilationists think there is something wrong with Black people and that’s why Black people are on the lower and dying end of racial inequity. The assimilationists believe Black people as a group can be changed for the better, and the segregationists do not. The segregationists and the assimilationists are challenged by antiracists. The antiracists say there is nothing wrong or right about Black people and everything wrong with racism. The antiracists say racism is the problem in need of changing, not Black people. The antiracists try to transform racism. The assimilationists try to transform Black people. The segregationists try to get away from Black people.

I mean, I had seen this happen so many times. Not personally, but on TV. In the news. People getting beaten, and sometimes killed, by the cops, and then there’s all this fuss about it, only to build up to a big heartbreak when nothing happens. The cops get off. And everybody cries and waits for the next dead kid, to do it all over again. That’s the way the story goes. A different kind of Lifetime movie. I didn’t want all that. Didn’t need it.

Fooled by racist ideas, I did not fully realize that the only thing wrong with Black people is that we think something is wrong with Black people. I did not fully realize that the only thing extraordinary about White people is that they think something is extraordinary about White people. There are lazy, hardworking, wise, unwise, harmless, and harmful individuals of every race, but no racial group is better or worse than another racial group in any way.

From a man doing it the only way he knows how, splitting his cries and his smiles right down the middle, swallowing his moonshine mistakes while in the sunlight his sweat irrigates his life and that life he- like you - has been tilling, hoping there's a harvest coming.

Light always wins

Turned out, freedom in America was like quicksand. It looked solid until a Black person tried to stand on it. Then it became clear that it was a sinkhole.

But do protests even work? I asked. I mean, I was all for the idea. I really was. But the only time I had ever heard about any protests actually working was Dr. King's. Thats it. Ain't never heard of no other ones making a difference. Berry stepped in. "They're a piece to the puzzle. I mean there are a lot of pieces, like reforming laws and things like that. But protests are what sends the message to the folks in power that something needs to change. That people are fed up, she explained. "We have a right to voice how we feel, and isn't that better than just doing nothing.

I’d just circle the room, because when you keep moving, people think you going somewhere, like you on a mission and shouldn’t be bothered. Like you busy. And that’s better than people realizing that you not busy at all. That you not okay with lunchrooms that don’t have trays, and that ain’t big enough spaces to disappear in, and that don’t stink of week-old dirty mop water, which I now know is the familiar smell of love and friendship.

But I have to warn you: Scrolling will never be enough. Reposting will never be enough. Hashtagging will never be enough. Because hatred has a way of convincing us that half love is whole. What I mean by that is we—all of us—have to fight against performance and lean into participation. We have to be participants. Active. We have to be more than audience members sitting comfortably in the stands of morality, shouting, “WRONG!” That’s too easy. Instead, we must be players on the field, on the court, in our classrooms and communities, trying to do right. Because it takes a whole hand—both hands—to grab hold of hatred. Not just a texting thumb and a scrolling index finger.

IT’S SO WEIRD HOW A PERSON can be a normal part of your everyday life, and then just disappear. And when they do, you realize that some of those everyday things go with them. Like the smell of food cooking. Or the sound of Rick James, Frankie Beverly, or the Isley Brothers playing as background music in our house. The kettle, whistling. Water running in the kitchen sink. She was always at the kitchen sink, my mom, doing a two-step or something. Her voice, and her voices.

Well, I'm sorry you couldn't make it either. I'm sorry I had to sit there in that church--which, by the way, had a broken air conditioner--sweating, watching all those people march down the aisle to look in my mother's casket and whisper to themselves all this mess about how much she looked like herself, even though she didn't. I'm sorry you weren't there to hear the lame choir drag out, song after song. I'm sorry you weren't there to see my dad try his best to be upbeat, cracking bad jokes in his speech, choking on his words. I'm sorry you weren't there to watch me totally lose it and explode into tears. I'm sorry you weren't there for me, but it doesn't matter, because even if you were, you wouldn't be able to feel what I feel. Nobody can. Even the preacher said so.

If we understand how the tree works, how the trunk and roots are where the power lies, and how gravity is on our side, we can attack it, each of us with small axes, and change the face of the forest. So let’s learn all there is to know about the tree of racism. The root. The fruit. The sap and trunk. The nests built over time, the changing leaves. That way, your generation can finally, actively chop it down.

some people had told me racism was a thing of he past, they'd told me not to get involved. But that was nuts. They were nuts. And more to the point---they's all been white people. Well guess what? I'm white too ---and that's exactly why I'm marching. I had to. Because racism was alive and real as shit. It was everywhere and all mixed up in everything, and the only people who aids it wasn't, and the only people was said, "Don't talk about it" were white. Well, stop lying. That's what I wanted to tell those people. Stop lying. Stop Denying. That's why I'm marching. Nothing was going to change unless we did something about it. We! White people! We had to stand up and say something about it goo, because otherwise it was just like what those posters in the crowd outside school said: OUR SILENCE IS ANOTHER KIND OF VIOLENCE.

1 WORLD RECORDS CHECK THIS OUT. This dude named Andrew Dahl holds the world record for blowing up the most balloons . . . with his nose. Yeah. That’s true. Not sure how he found out that was some kinda special talent, and I can’t even imagine how much snot be in those balloons, but hey, it’s a thing and Andrew’s the best at it. There’s also this lady named Charlotte Lee who holds the record for owning the most rubber ducks. No lie. Here’s what’s weird about that: Why would you even want one rubber duck, let alone 5,631? I mean, come on. And me, well, I probably hold the world record for knowing about the most world records. That, and for eating the most sunflower seeds.

I was marching. I kept saying it as I scanned the crowd for Jill, pumping myself up, because some people had told me racism was a thing of the past, they's told me not to get involved. But that was nuts. They were nuts. And more to the point - they'd all been white people. Well, guess what? I'm white too - and that's exactly why I was marching. I had to. Because racism was alive and real as shit. It was everywhere and all mixed up in everything, and the only people who said it wasn't, and the only people who said "Don't talk about it" were white. Well, stop lying. That's what I wanted to tell those people. Stop lying. Stop denying. That's why I was marching. Nothing was going to change unless we did something about it. We! White people! We had to stand up and say something about it too, because otherwise it was just like what one of those posters in the crowd outside school said: OUR SILENCE IS ANOTHER KIND OF VIOLENCE