Cebo Campbell Books & Quotes

“How could she possibly keep her daughter safe from all that being black in this country weaponized against her? Protect her life, of course, but proportionally protect her mind and heart? Did any place exist where the path to her daughter finding herself wasn't obstructed? Was there ever any room in this country for little black girls to fully self-actualize?”

Racism Safety Girls Mothers African Americans Blacks Daughters Black Girls Black Mothers

Book:Sky Full of Elephants

Source: Sky Full of Elephants

“In America everyone carried something, emotion strapped to their backs, trauma to their ankles.”

America Emotion United States Trauma Usa United States Of America Us Burdens

Book:Sky Full of Elephants

Source: Sky Full of Elephants

“Charles, it's okay to be two things at once. Every day that a tree is growing, it's dying at the same time. If it can do that, then a very sad thing can also give you release.”

Growing Sadness Dying Release Trees Duality

Book:Sky Full of Elephants

Source: Sky Full of Elephants

“You almost make it sound righteous." "I suppose anything sounds righteous when you pay it enough respect.”

Respect Righteousness

Book:Sky Full of Elephants

Source: Sky Full of Elephants

“You can't deny the truth of it: it's scary and it's unknown. That's a fact. But it's also a fact that scary and unknown is how everything has always been.”

Fear Being Scared Scary Things Unknowns

Book:Sky Full of Elephants

Source: Sky Full of Elephants

“We have to do for others more now than ever. That's what we had before, that's what we got left," she said.”

Giving Kindness Support Favors Assisting Aiding

Book:Sky Full of Elephants

Source: Sky Full of Elephants

“I know I've spent my whole life just trying to convince myself I'm worth the trouble of my own existence.”

Life Self Love Living Self Acceptance Existing

Book:Sky Full of Elephants

Source: Sky Full of Elephants

“She longed for the shape of the rifle in her hand. How easily the gun made the world change the way she wanted.”

Change Power Authority Weapons Rifles Guns

Book:Sky Full of Elephants

Source: Sky Full of Elephants

“The world has already changed--yanked right out of the hands of anybody trying to go backward--be backward. It changed. Period and forever. What you're scared of is the burden of changing yourself along with it.”

World Change Evolution Self Improvement Self Change

Book:Sky Full of Elephants

Source: Sky Full of Elephants

“I ain't ever felt special my whole life." "What did you feel?" "Hard to explain. Felt like the opposite of special. Like a big black void moving through the world. Empty, if not for all the people trying to fill it with their own judgments on me." "The thing about voids, Charlie Brunton, is ain't nothing inside of them but light they can't figure out how to free.”

Judgment Emptiness Void Ordinariness Specialness Feeling Special

Book:Sky Full of Elephants

Source: Sky Full of Elephants

“But we came to learn paradise is the mind. What you believe about yourself. What you know about yourself. We have a a lot of work to do, and we know it will never be perfect. But better is a direction. As long as we progress, together, we will be all right.”

Mind Brain Thoughts Perfection Paradise Togetherness

Book:Sky Full of Elephants

Source: Sky Full of Elephants

“That's not crazy, Sidney. That's suffering. And suffering makes kin of all of us.”

Suffering Family Craziness Being Crazy Being Family

Book:Sky Full of Elephants

Source: Sky Full of Elephants

“You two are the oddest family I have ever seen." "That's all a family is: space to be odd.”

Family Strangeness Oddness

Book:Sky Full of Elephants

Source: Sky Full of Elephants

“Because my past does not make the sum of me. I'm free to move on and let my life lessons put the wind behind the rest of my life.”

Self Past Life Lessons History Living Moving Forward Moving On

Book:Sky Full of Elephants

Source: Sky Full of Elephants

“Mississippi is the shadow, the soul, and the skeleton closet of the nation. If America had ruins, Mississippi would be it. Every step you take got blood in the soil.”

Violence Blood Racism Mississippi

Book:Sky Full of Elephants

Source: Sky Full of Elephants

“So, what kind of things do you like?" Sidney asked. "Well, I love to dance and sing like my momma. I like trying new things. I like helping people. I like it when boys think I'm intimidating, which they should. But I also know I'm still young, so I'm giving myself space to learn all the things I like. And not being hard on myself for not being what somebody else wants. That's all. Trusting my instincts. Never making myself small for other people. And no judgment." "That sounds perfect." "Not perfect. In progress.”

Progress Self Love Self Acceptance Knowing Oneself

Book:Sky Full of Elephants

Source: Sky Full of Elephants

“I just wish we could go back to when everybody was happy." "When was everybody happy? What time was that? Did I miss getting on that train?" He leaned a bit into her space. "No one was happy, Sidney. We were just a bunch of people getting on with it, living our lives with monsters on our backs. No, nobody was happy, and nobody told the truth." "What was the truth?" "That the world wasn't ever equal. And the white folks who made it that way--the ones who fought, silent and spitting, to keep it that way--refused all responsibility for what it meant. You can't imagine the inhumanity, horrors on top of horrors. People shot in the streets, in their homes, at grocery stores, so much that after a while some white folks just kind of shrugged. No one was fighting for our bodies. And it went on like that for so long I think we all started to believe that was just the way life was supposed to be. Trust me when I tell you, I've been black all over the world and I always knew what that meant. Not welcomed anywhere, and yet there ain't nowhere else to go. Damn, what a storm in the mind.”

Happiness Race Prejudice Inequality Bigotry African Americans Blacks Race Relations Inhumanity Whites

Book:Sky Full of Elephants

Source: Sky Full of Elephants

“Young black boys, Charlie thought, the most marvelous beings in the universe. As nonchalantly as Herald bit into that fruit did black boys ever ponder their influence on the whole world. How effortlessly they rounded the shape of the earth with their swagger and illuminated its days with their creativity. Their hope, Charlie mused, offered even the bleakest parts of our planet a second sun.”

Children Hope Boys Creativity Influence African Americans Blacks Swagger Black Boys

Book:Sky Full of Elephants

Source: Sky Full of Elephants

“Is it really true, Sailor, that Alabama has a king?" Sidney asked. "The south has always been a monarchy in some form or another. Everybody thinks they're the king of something here. People, land, business.”

Kings South Monarchy Monarchs Alabama Southern United States Southern Usa

Book:Sky Full of Elephants

Source: Sky Full of Elephants

“I don’t believe there has ever been a more terrible weapon in this world than the word they.”

Language Weapons Words They Othering

Book:Sky Full of Elephants

Source: Sky Full of Elephants

“How fucked up does that make me?" "Doesn't make you fucked up at all. No more than anyone else put in fucked-up situations.”

Messed Up Screwed Up Fucked Up Fucked

Book:Sky Full of Elephants

Source: Sky Full of Elephants

“She taught him how to see--further, wider, clearer. A good woman always does.”

Men Women Relationships Learning

Book:Sky Full of Elephants

Source: Sky Full of Elephants

“You're locked up here in your castle thinking we are all damned. But we're the lucky ones." "Lucky how?" "Lucky because the world has tried to destroy me in every kind of way, but I am still here. So are you. So are a lot of good people. Ain't no other people in the history of the world ever had so little of a serving of living as us. And now, we got all of it.”

Justice Luck African Americans Blacks Reparations Lucky People

Book:Sky Full of Elephants

Source: Sky Full of Elephants

“Magic is just all science at once.”

Science Magic

Book:Sky Full of Elephants

Source: Sky Full of Elephants

“At the cruising height, Charlie could see how little light still burned in the country below. So much of the land cloaked in darkness. All the space between cities and towns, connecting mountains to rivers, shore to shore. The darkness held America together. Looking down at a black immensity, Charlie saw the darkness as its own kind of beauty, experiencing for once the full shape of it, its beginning endless, its end ceaselessly moving. A form that held all the power of the universe and, without sound or grievance, gave every bit of that power all away.”

Light America Darkness United States Usa African Americans Blacks Light Vs Dark Light Vs Darkness

Book:Sky Full of Elephants

Source: Sky Full of Elephants

“I don't hate white people. I hate the whole world for letting what happened to us go on the way it did. You telling me hundreds of years of torture and couldn't nobody stop it? And ain't nobody want to rectify it? Hell yeah, damn right I'm mad and I'll be mad forever, until the day I die, and even then I want them to set my coffin on fire so I can be mad in the afterlife. Because what happened to our people deserves that kind of mad. And if won't nobody else feel it, I'll goddamn feel it enough for everybody. That's my liberation.”

Hate Race Anger Liberation African Americans Blacks Race Relations Whites Inequity

Book:Sky Full of Elephants

Source: Sky Full of Elephants

Cebo Campbell Books

Sky Full of Elephants

Related Quotes