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Trevor Noah

Trevor Noah Books

Comedian

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“If you ask my mother whether she ever considered the ramifications of having a mixed child under apartheid, she will say no. She wanted to do something, figured out a way to do it, and then she did it. She has a level of fearlessness that you have to possess to take on something like she did. If you stop to consider the ramifications, you'll never do anything. Still, it was a crazy, reckless thing to do.”

MotivationCourage
Book:Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
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“The dogs left with us and we walked. I sobbed the whole way home, still heartbroken. My mom had no time for my whining. “Why are you crying?!” “Because Fufi loves another boy.” “So? Why would that hurt you? It didn’t cost you anything. Fufi’s here. She still loves you. She’s still your dog. So get over it.” Fufi was my first heartbreak. No one has ever betrayed me more than Fufi. It was a valuable lesson to me. The hard thing was understanding that Fufi wasn’t cheating on me with another boy. She was merely living her life to the fullest. Until I knew that she was going out on her own during the day, her other relationship hadn’t affected me at all. Fufi had no malicious intent. I believed that Fufi was my dog, but of course that wasn’t true. Fufi was a dog. I was a boy. We got along well. She happened to live in my house. That experience shaped what I’ve felt about relationships for the rest of my life: You do not own the thing that you love. I was lucky to learn that lesson at such a young age. I have so many friends who still, as adults, wrestle with feelings of betrayal. They’ll come to me angry and crying and talking about how they’ve been cheated on and lied to, and I feel for them. I understand what they’re going through. I sit with them and buy them a drink and I say, “Friend, let me tell you the story of Fufi.”

LoveHeartbreakCheatingLife LessonDogsFree Love
Book:Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
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“The hood is also a low-stress, comfortable life. All your mental energy goes into getting by, so you don’t have to ask yourself any of the big questions. Who am I? Who am I supposed to be? Am I doing enough? In the hood you can be a forty-year-old man living in your mom’s house asking people for money and it’s not looked down on. You never feel like a failure in the hood, because someone’s always worse off than you, and you don’t feel like you need to do more, because the biggest success isn’t that much higher than you, either. It allows you to exist in a state of suspended animation.”

PovertyFutureComfort ZoneHoodGhettoAspirations
Book:Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
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“We spent so much time being afraid of failure, afraid of rejection. But regret is the thing we should fear the most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal question you will never have the answer to. "What if..." "If only.." "I wonder what would have..." You will never, never know, and it will haunt you for the rest of your days.”

Inspirational Attitude
Book:Born A Crime Stories from a South African Childhood / Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race / Natives Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire
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“We do horrible things to one another because we don't see the person it affects. If white people ever saw black people as human, they would see that slavery is unconscionable. We live in a world where we don't see the ramifications of what we do to others, because we don't live with them. It would be a whole lot harder for an investment banker to rip off people with subprime mortgages if he actually had to live with them. If we could see one another's pain and empathize with one another. it would never be worth it to us to commit the crimes in the first place.”

KindnessEmpathy
Book:Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
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“It's a powerful experience, shitting. There's something magical about it, profound even. I think God made humans shit in the way we do because it brings us back down to earth and gives us humility. I don't care who you are, we all shit the same. Beyonce shits. The pope shits. The Queen of England shits. When we shit we forget our airs and our graces, we forget how famous or how rich we are. All of that goes away. You are never more yourself than when you're taking a shit. You have that moment where you realize, 'This is me. This is who I am.”

HumorLaugh
Book:Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
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“With online porn today you just drop straight into the madness, but with dial-up it took so long for the images to load. It was almost gentlemanly compared to now. You’d spend a good five minutes looking at her face, getting to know her as a person. Then a few minutes later you’d get some boobs. By the time you got to her vagina, you’d spent a lot of quality time together.”

DatingPornDial Up
Book:Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
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“Nelson Mandela once said, 'If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.' He was so right. When you make the effort to speak someone else's language, even if it's just basic phrases here and there, you are saying to them, 'I understand that you have a culture and identity that exists beyond me. I see you as a human being”

LanguageEmpathyCulture Identity
Book:Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
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“It’s easy to be judgmental about crime when you live in a world wealthy enough to be removed from it. But the hood taught me that everyone has different notions of right and wrong, different definitions of what constitutes crime, and what level of crime they’re willing to participate in. If a crackhead comes through and he’s got a crate of Corn Flakes boxes he’s stolen out of the back of a supermarket, the poor mom isn’t thinking, I’m aiding and abetting a criminal by buying these Corn Flakes. No. She’s thinking, My family needs food and this guy has Corn Flakes”

Empathy
Book:Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
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“On Sunday afternoons after church, we’d go for drives out in the country. My mom would find places with beautiful views for us to sit and have a picnic. There was none of the fanfare of a picnic basket or plates or anything like that, only baloney and brown bread and margarine sandwiches wrapped up in butcher paper. To this day, baloney and brown bread and margarine will instantly take me back. You can come with all the Michelin stars in the world, just give me baloney and brown bread and margarine, and I’m in heaven.”

Food
Book:Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
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“I don't regret anything I've ever done in life, any choice that I've made. But I'm consumed with regret for the things I didn't do, the choices I didn't make, the things I didn't say. We spent so much time being afraid of failure, afraid of rejection. But regret is the thing we should fear the most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an internal question you will never have the answer to. "What if..." "If only..." "I wonder what would have..." You will never, never know, and it will haunt you for the rest of your days.”

LifeDecisionRegretChoice
Book:Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
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“I don't regret anything I've ever done in life, any choice that I've made. But I'm consumed with regret for the things I didn't do, the choices I didn't make, the things I didn't say. We spend so much time being afraid of failure, afraid of rejection. But regret is the thing we should fear most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal question you will never have to answer to. "What if..." "If only...""I wonder what would have..." You will never, never know, and it will haunt you for the rest of your days.”

Life LessonsRegret
Book:Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
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“Let me break down a paradox that women see far too often-men who admire strong, free-spirited women but ultimately want to cage them. Why? Because for those men power is only fun when it's a challenge. But here's the truth: strong women were never meant to be tamed. That's a fact. Another one for you is that the traditional man wants a woman to be submissive yet he never falls in love with submissive women.”

FeminismPower DynamicsStrong Women Don T Take Shit
Author:Trevor Noah
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“I don’t regret anything I’ve ever done in life, any choice that I’ve made. But I’m consumed with regret for the things I didn’t do, the choices I didn’t make, the things I didn’t say. We spend so much time being afraid of failure, afraid of rejection. But regret is the thing we should fear most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal question you will never have the answer to. “What if…” “If only…” “I wonder what would have…” You will never, never know, and it will haunt you for the rest of your days.”

LifeInspirational
Book:Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
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“I know you see me as some crazy old bitch nagging at you," she said, "but you forget the reason I ride you so hard and give you so much shit is because I love you. Everything I have ever done I've done from a place of love. If I don't punish you, the world will punish you even worse. The world doesn't love you. If the police get you, the police don't love you. When I beat you, I'm trying to save you. When they beat you, they're trying to kill you.”

DisciplineFamily Relationships
Book:Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
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“Hustling is to work what surfing the Internet is to reading. If you add up how much you read in a year on the Internet—tweets, Facebook posts, lists—you’ve read the equivalent of a shit ton of books, but in fact you’ve read no books in a year. When I look back on it, that’s what hustling was. It’s maximal effort put into minimal gain. It’s a hamster wheel. If I’d put all that energy into studying I’d have earned an MBA.”

ReadingHustleMbaHustlingInternet Surfing
Book:Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
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“But the real world doesn’t go away. Racism exists. People are getting hurt, and just because it’s not happening to you doesn’t mean it’s not happening. And at some point, you have to choose. Black or white. Pick a side. You can try to hide from it. You can say, "Oh, I don’t pick sides,” but at some point life will force you to pick a side.”

RacismBystander
Book:Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
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“Von ihrer Familie entfremdet und schwanger von einem Mann, mit dem sie nicht gesehen werden durfte, war sie auf sich allein gestellt. Sie kam in den Kreißsaal, die Ärzte schnitten ihr den Bauch auf, griffen hinein und holten ein halb weißes, halb schwarzes Kind hervor, das gegen eine Reihe von Gesetzen, Statuten und Vorschriften verstieß - ich wurde schon als Verbrechen geboren. - S. 40”

Racism And Culture
Book:Born A Crime Stories from a South African Childhood / Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race / Natives Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire
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“An der H. A. Jack School erkannte ich, dass ich schwarz war. Vor meinem Erlebnis im Pausenhof hatte ich mich nie entscheiden müssen, doch als ich dazu gezwungen wurde, entschied ich mich für schwarz. Die Welt betrachtete mich als farbig, aber ich verbrachte mein Leben nicht damit, mich selbst zu betrachten. Ich betrachtete andere Menschen. Ich sah mich so, wie ich die anderen Menschen um mich herum sah, und diese Menschen waren schwarz. - S. 77”

Racism And Culture
Book:Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
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“Once Mandela was elected we could finally live freely. Exiles started to return. I met my first one when I was around seventeen. He told me his story and I was like, "Wait, what? You mean we could have left? That was an option?" Imagine being thrown out of an airplane. You hit the ground and break all your bones, you go to the hospital and you heal and you move on and finally put the whole thing behind you - and then one day somebody tells you about parachutes. That's how I felt. I couldn't understand why we'd stayed. I went straight hoe and asked my mom. "Why? Why didn't we just leave? Why didn't we go to Switzerland?" "Because I am not Swiss." she said, as stubborn as ever. "This is my country. Why should I leave?”

Third World Country
Author:Trevor Noah
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