Ziwe Quotes

I demand to be taken as seriously as a clown.

I am very self-conscious about the way that I look, in part because I am a woman who also happens to be conscious.

Poetry is cringe.

But intention is not an excuse for impact.

Personally, I long to be a canceled rich man because that is just a vacation.

Logic serves that if I never age, I can't be thrown away.

external validation is a bottomless pit—there’s no amount that’ll make you feel whole if you do not love yourself.

All of this resulted in my classmates laughing at me, which, thanks to what my therapist describes as habitual disassociation, I did not process in real time.

No disrespect to cat people, as I do identify as an indoor cat—emotionally withholding, vindictive, and a lover of tuna.

If you are wondering what gives me the unique qualifications to write about the complex subject of race in America, the answer is: vibes.

We are wiser to the fact that having a black friend is not a defense against accusations of racism, just like having a black child does not absolve Thomas Jefferson from being a fugly hater.

The last time I visited LA, I was at a cool Hollywood party where suddenly the host directed guests to look outside. Why? Because it was raining ash and if you tilted your head and hated Greta Thunberg, it looked like snow.

I am very self-conscious about the way that I look, in part because I am a woman who also happens to be conscious. Since birth, every commercial, every magazine, every piece of media I have encountered has socialized me to hate every body part.

This unintended consequence of performing unity exemplifies the ways in which people can mean well and still do absolutely wrong. Best-case scenario, the black square shows your network that you at least care about black people enough to post a photo, which I should note is free and easy. Unfortunately, worst-case scenario, this insignificant action can set forth a tidal wave of trouble for the grassroots activists on the ground doing the work. Performing solidarity is inherently selfish. Its very point is to virtue-signal that you are a good person, because it matters to you that people know you are a good person.

Listening to the voice of a woman who seemed to belong to everyone but herself reminded me of her strength, because even as Britney suffered in isolation, her words moved millions—excuse me, billions—to dance. She reminds me that there are some souls that you cannot keep down. Some people are destined to be great.

If my career is a living testament of anything, let it be that one opportunity is not enough. It is a series of cracked-open windows and doors that have gotten me into a position of what I would describe as fleeting power. We need as many opportunities as possible. To fail, to be bad, and then to eventually succeed.

I had the distinct understanding of what it meant to be a woman in the world: It was mid at best. No power. No credit. No rights. Just a lot of people being mad at you for not being perfect when perfection was a moving goalpost. I was just supposed to accept that that was the way the world operated.

I do not exist just to move plot. While I am a supportive friend, I am not a supporting character. I am the protagonist of my perfectly imperfect story.

Celine Dion is a black Chow Chow and everything I could have ever asked for if what I asked for was a guard dog that did not enjoy the company of people and was too cute to intimidate strangers.

You can't have my body, but you can have my body of work.

With this policing, I had a distinct understanding of what it meant to be a woman in the world: It was mid at best.

I also have a beautiful heart under two moderately sized breasts.

One time, PETA compared their fight for animal rights to Martin Luther King Jr.’s fight for civil rights. Adopt don’t shop, fur is murder, blah blah blah, all that stuff . . . I love animals, do not get me wrong, but there is no way that Hello Kitty has done anything as iconic as writing “Letters from a Birmingham Jail.” Far

And when they do, it is important to remember that they usually result in an incredibly privileged person temporarily experiencing slightly less privilege than they were accustomed to, which is still a very high baseline of privilege compared with the rest of the world. Personally, I long to be a canceled rich man because that is just a vacation.

Blaming individuals is fun; deconstructing centuries of oppression requires so much boring reading. One tactic is like getting stitches, and the other is like getting a transplant of every vital organ—even if the face is the same, it is a totally different person.

After years of no one caring about my work, a valuable lesson I learned from rejection is that I cannot live my life for external validation. This seems contradictory, because most artwork directly prompts the validation of applause or laughter or furrowed brows and nodding heads. But external validation is a bottomless pit—there’s no amount that’ll make you feel whole if you do not love yourself. So I resolved, much later than I would have liked to, to create to entertain myself.

If you are wondering what gives me the unique qualifications to write about the complex subject of race in America, the answer is: vibes.

While I am marginalized in my own right, it is important to acknowledge my complicity in the occupation of stolen land.

I suppose the idea behind the “Some of my best friends are black” defense is that you cannot be prejudiced if you choose to interact with different racial backgrounds. It suggests that any association with black people is a form of activism when it in fact is the bare minimum of living in a society that includes black people.

Why don’t my parents have normal rules? Why don’t they eat normal food? Why don’t they wear normal clothes? Why can’t they just be normal? These questions are xenophobic. It took me a long time to be proud of where I came from.

Racists do not get to decide whether or not their actions are racist. It is the rest of us who are subject to their outbursts who can stand back and connect the dots.

The truth is, I create art to heal my inner child—the young girl who did not have the words to explain the world herself.

It took me too long to understand why I felt compelled to write, but eventually I realized that my life experiences had offered me the merit of something unique to say.

Performing solidarity is inherently selfish. Its very point is to virtue-signal that you are a good person, because it matters to you that people know you are a good person.

The problem is that people who are suffering do not get paid in thoughts and prayers. If you really want to effect actual change, you have to look into your arsenal of talents that you can sustain longer than a social media day. Can you sing? Can you write? Can you build a cabinet? Are you good at organizing networks of people? Are you charismatic and convincing enough to effectively phonebank for underfunded candidates? Are you a social recluse with deep pockets that can fund charitable organizations? Are you bad at everything?

My art is not about success. My art is about me—my life, my experiences, my perspective. That is my cheat code. I remind myself that I am one of a kind. I am special. I have something to say. And even if no one cares, I do. The only way I could be an imposter is if I’m not true to myself.

Toni Morrison once said that racism was a distraction. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being, wasting your time proving to others what you know to be true.