Matriarch Tina Knowles Quotes

Anyone who’s worked at a nonprofit knows you do ten jobs and there’s still more to do.

From my first breath, I was told, shown, and embraced into knowing that it is an honor to be a Black person.

Let me just talk, nothing’s wrong except how I’ve treated you. You’ve been the best mom in the world to me. Me? I’m just an idiot, you know. I’m looking at these other people’s moms and I’m like, God, I didn’t even know moms like that existed. And here I have you and I’m sorry.

you

it was going to be a place that let a little Black girl know that she was beautiful. Not beautiful “too”—there was no need to factor in a certain criterion of beauty that centered whiteness. The pride should be based solely on her own self. Black is beautiful.

A perfect summer day - like this one at age five - could last you forever if you started it early enough.

All the way back from when I was a little kid, I would let myself have a good cry and then say to myself, “Okay, suck it up and keep it moving.” That approach worked for me for a long time. I couldn’t know how this only meant I stored the trauma in my body—stashed it in my mind and heart to lie in wait. Keep it moving, I said. So I moved.