Lily Prestegard > Lily's Quotes

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
― Jason Reynolds, All American Boys

“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?”
― Jason Reynolds, All American Boys

“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!”
― Jason Reynolds, All American Boys

“History can only teach its lesson if it is remembered.”
― Jason Reynolds, All American Boys

“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.”
― Jason Reynolds, All American Boys

“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.”
― Jason Reynolds, All American Boys

“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.”
― Jason Reynolds, All American Boys

“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.”
― Jason Reynolds, All American Boys

“My hands were already up, a reflex from seeing a cop coming toward me.”
― Jason Reynolds, All American Boys

“some rich old white dude, chillin’ on the East Side, doing his thing with some young supermodel with fake everything on a mattress made of real money. Lotto-ticket money. Cheap-forty-ounce money. Bootleg-DVD money. My money.”
― Jason Reynolds, All American Boys

“some rich old white dude, chillin’ on the East Side, doing his thing with some young supermodel with fake everything on a mattress made of real money. Lotto-ticket money.”
― Jason Reynolds, All American Boys

“Just so you know, patent leather shoes should only be for men who are getting married. Nothing about patent leather says “war.”
― Jason Reynolds, All American Boys

“Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t have a problem with a good prayer. I mean, I believe in God. At least I think I do. I just wondered where God was when I was being mopped by that cop. And I knew that’s what the pastor had come to tell me. That God was there. That God was always there. Which, to me, is the wrong thing to say, because if he or it or whatever was there and didn’t do nothing, then that would make God my enemy. Because he let it happen. I would much rather Pastor Johnson say that God wasn’t there. That he was busy. That he turned his back, just for a second, to check on somebody else, and that asshole officer snuck right by him and got me. But… nope.”
― Jason Reynolds, All American Boys

“Douglas’s work. And the first time Mrs. Caperdeen showed us a slide from his series Aspects of Negro Life, I knew the kind of art I wanted to start making. And so I did. The only difference was that I framed mine in a circle, like The Family Circus. And that’s why I needed Ma to make sure she brought me my sketch pad and pencils. I woke up early, and before doing anything else, before getting up and having a morning pee, or brushing my teeth, or spirometering, I turned the TV on, muted it, then grabbed my stuff and starting sketching on a fresh page. I wasn’t sure what I was drawing. That’s not true. I knew exactly what I was drawing. The only thing I could. I was”
― Jason Reynolds, All American Boys

“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.”
― Jason Reynolds, All American Boys

“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.”
― Jason Reynolds, All American Boys

“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.”
― Jason Reynolds, All American Boys

“Nobody says the words anymore, but somehow the violence still remains.”
― Brendan Kiely, All American Boys

“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.”
― Jason Reynolds, All American Boys

“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.”
― Jason Reynolds, All American Boys

“...nobody owes you anything, so when you get something, be appreciative.”
― Jason Reynolds, All American Boys

“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.”
― Jason Reynolds, All American Boys

“Paul'd gotten it all wrong. Becoming a cop would not make him a hero- but what kind of cop he became could have.”
― Jason Reynolds, All American Boys

“Fear. Like the way Ma told me to cross the street to the other side of the sidewalk if I was walking home alone and I saw a group of guys walking toward me. Guys. That wasn't the word she used. Thugs. Fear of thugs. Just like what some people were saying on the news. Rashad looked like a thug.”
― Brendan Kiely, All American Boys

“You think it's dumb when someone says there's no 'I' in team, but you stick one in there and you see how dumb that looks.”
― Brendan Kiely, All American Boys

“Do you know the stats? It’s something like black people are twice as likely to have no weapons on them when they’re killed by cops. Twice as likely! Should I run down the list of the people this has happened to? Calm down? Let’s paint their names on the walls and watch, there’ll be enough to give the entire hospital a fresh new look. Then tell me to calm down. He could’ve been killed!”
― Jason Reynolds, All American Boys

“What it was like to love something enough to do anything to come back to it.”
― Jason Reynolds, All American Boys

“I really, really didn’t. I just wanted him to stop beating me. I just wanted to live.”
― Jason Reynolds, All American Boys

“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.”
― Jason Reynolds, All American Boys

“When a man gives his opinion, he's a man. When a woman gives her opinion, she's a bitch.”
― Bette Davis