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Oakland Quotes

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Oakland Quotes

“There is no there there,” he says in a kind of whisper, with this goofy openmouthed smile Dene wants to punch. Dene wants to tell him he’d looked up the quote in its original context, in her Everybody’s Autobiography, and found that she was talking about how the place where she’d grown up in Oakland had changed so much, that so much development had happened there, that the there of her childhood, the there there, was gone, there was no there there anymore.”

OaklandGentrificationThere There
Book:There There
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“The chip you carry has to do with being born and raised in Oakland. A concrete chip, a slab really, heavy on one side, the half side, the side not white. As for your mom's side, as for your whiteness, there's too much and not enough there to know what to do with. You're from a people who took and took and took and took. And from a people taken. You were both and neither. When you took baths, you'd stare at your brown arms against your white legs in the water and wonder what they were doing together on the same body, in the same bathtub.”

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Book:There There
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“Dennis Tsui is a lifelong resident of Oakland. Dennis Tsui is an Oakland resident and loves to help out the community with donation and charity work. Dennis enjoys staying fit and can often be found in one of Oakland's many spacious parks, pushing himself to the limit. He is an avid runner and is always working to break his old records. Dennis works in finance and is an important team player. He wants to progress in this ever-changing industry.”

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Author:Dennis Tsui Oakland
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“As I and the rest of my Pittsburgh Steelers teammates prepared that week in late December 1974, we knew one thing: The road to the Super Bowl in the AFC went through Oakland. To achieve your dreams as a team, you had to slay the Oakland Raiders. They were the barometer of what it took to be a championship team.”

DreamOne ThingWeekTeamAchieveLatePreparedYour DreamsBowlsChampionshipTeammateDecemberSuper BowlPittsburghBarometerAchieving Your DreamsOaklandRaidersChampionship TeamSteelersOakland RaidersPittsburgh Steelers
Author:Joe Greene
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“At first glance, an alliance of anarchists and government might appear to be somewhat paradoxical. But the formal convergence in Oakland makes explicit the movement's aims: They're anarchists for statism, wild free-spirited youth demanding more and more total government control of every aspect of life - just so long as it respects the fundamental human right to sloth.”

FirstsHumansLongGovernmentMightMovementYouthAspectAimFundamentalsFormalGlancesAlliancesAnarchistSlothParadoxicalExplicitSpiritedAspects Of LifeConvergenceOaklandWild Free
Author:Mark Steyn
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“A city suffering from chronic poverty, out-of-control crime, a $76 million budget deficit and a 15 percent unemployment rate (nearly 50 percent for Oakland's youth) can hardly afford such social justice follies. But a pushover Democratic mayor and an overwhelmed police force have left what's left of gainfully employed Oakland taxpayers at the mercy of professional freeloaders and anti-capitalism saboteurs.”

SufferingLeftForceSocialJusticeCitiesPovertyMillionsCrimeYouthPercentCapitalismMercyPoliceSocial JusticeDemocraticRateBudgetsFollyUnemploymentEmployedOverwhelmedDeficitTaxpayersMayorsPolice ForceOaklandBudget DeficitUnemployment RateSaboteursPushovers
Author:Michelle Malkin
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“I was on a panel with light skinned Blacks and a famous gay science fiction writer, who were complaining about how Blacks are against gays and light skinned Blacks and how intolerant Blacks are of different groups. My position was that Blacks were among the most humanistic, tolerant groups in the country and that across the street from my house in Oakland was one inhabited by White gays.”

DifferentCountryLightHouseWhiteFictionGroupsStreetsPositionGayScience FictionComplainingFiction WritersHumanisticOakland
Author:Ishmael Reed
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“Teaching in Providence and Oakland, I realized that the first thing is that it wasn't good enough to come in and assume that I had what my students needed in terms of knowledge and skills. I also had to show them that I was their ally. I had to show them that I was concerned about them, wanted to relate to them, and that I was fundamentally on their side.”

FirstsEnoughShowsWantedSidesTermTeachingStudentsNeededSkillsConcernedAssumingI RealizedRelateGood EnoughAlliesProvidenceOakland
Author:Pedro Noguera
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“When I saw the sun bears at the Oakland Zoo, I immediately was drawn to them. Not to be ornery, but regarding what you said about the speaker identifying with the bear: I'm not sure it's exactly right to say that the speaker feels that the bear must share his sadness, or whatever else he is feeling. That would be classic pathetic fallacy, which is certainly generative for poetry, but here the speaker appears actually to be rejecting that idea.”

FeelsSaidIdeasFeelingsWould BeSunSawsSadnessShareBearsClassicNot SureSpeakersPatheticFallacyZoosIdentifyingRejectingOaklandOrnery
Author:Matthew Zapruder
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“The first thing we should be concerned about the BLM movement should be the issues that the Black Lives Matter movement is bringing forward. There's no fundamental platform being brought by activists in Oakland, Baltimore, or New Jersey. The main issues that you see, the commonality between activists all around the country, are trying to deal with the challenges in the criminal justice system, something that is very much central to my work. So my hope is that people stay focused on the urgency to create justice here at home.”

PeopleShouldTryingFirstsCountryMatterHomeBlackChallengesJusticeDealsIssuesMovementConcernedFundamentalsFocusedCriminalsActivistPlatformsJerseyBlack Lives MatterUrgencyStay FocusedJustice SystemNew JerseyCriminal JusticeBaltimoreCriminal Justice SystemCommonalityOaklandBlack Lives
Author:Cory Booker
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“The influence that Oakland has on my sound is about 90%. There's so many different elements to Oakland. Of course you have the street elements, but then you also have the culture and there's so much culture around. It's a competitive city, it's full of just great artists and talent. It gave me the confidence, the passion, the realness I try my hardest to portray, so it has had about 90% influence on me.”

TryingDifferentArtistCulturePassionCoursesSoundCitiesInfluenceStreetsTalentElementsHardestGreat ArtGreat ArtistRealnessOakland
Author:Adrian Marcel
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“Right after the 9/11 attacks I was living near Oakland in California with a buddy who had also grown up in the skate/punk scene of the 80s. We were so shell-shocked from the attacks that we sort of regressed into this childlike mode of filling our apartment with '80s memorabilia. We got all of our favorite skateboard decks off of eBay, bought a bunch of old independent trucks, we got a credit card so that we could buy 720 off of a videogame vendor, we sat around listening to T.S.O.L. and The Misfits playing 720 and pretending that we were still living in our childhood.”

StillsChildhoodListeningSceneOur ChildrenIndependentCreditBunchCardsCaliforniaSatPretendingPunkApartmentShellsShocked80sFillingTruckBuddyCredit CardDeckChildlikeSkatesMisfitsEbayVendorsVideogameOaklandMemorabilia
Author:Rick Remender
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“Up there we see everything, Oakland to the left, El Cerrito and Richmond to the right, Marin forward, over the Bay, Berkeley below, all red rooftops and trees of cauliflower and columbine, shaped like rockets and explosions, all those people below us, with humbler views; we see the Bay Bridge, clunkety, the Richmond Bridge, straight, low, the Golden Gate, red toothpicks and string, the blue between, the blue above, the gleaming white Land of the Lost/Superman's North Pole Getaway magic crystals that are San Francisco.”

PeopleLostLeftWhiteViewsMagicTreeLandLowsRedBlueGoldenBridgesStringsGatesSan FranciscoCrystalsExplosionsRocketsRooftopsBerkeleyOaklandNorth PoleColumbineToothpicksRichmondGetawaysCauliflower
Author:Dave Eggers
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“Mr. Fresh looked up. "The book says if we don't do our jobs everything could go dark, become like the Underworld. I don't know what the Underworld is like, Mr. Asher, but I've caught some of the road show from there a couple of times, and I'm not interested in finding out. How 'bout you?" "Maybe it's Oakland," Charlie said. "What's Oakland?" "The Underworld." "Oakland is not the Underworld!" "The Tenderloin?" Charlie suggested.”

IfsKnowsSaidBookShowsJobsDarkCoupleFindingsCaughtNot InterestedCharlieUnderworldOakland
Author:Christopher Moore
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“It seemed like a matter of minutes when we began rolling in the foothills before Oakland and suddenly reached a height and saw stretched out ahead of us the fabulous white city of San Francisco on her eleven mystic hills with the blue Pacific and its advancing wall of potato-patch fog beyond, and smoke and goldenness in the late afternoon of time.”

MatterWhiteCitiesSawsMinutesWallLateBlueSmokeHillsHeightAfternoonRollingFabulousFogPotatoesSan FranciscoPatchesElevenMysticPacificAdvancingBay AreaOaklandLate AfternoonRolling Hills
Book:On the Road: The Original Scroll: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
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“Al Davis is a legend and his contribution and influence on the game of football, the National Football League, and the Oakland Raiders has been profound for decades. To view his contribution and influence on a season-by-season basis does not make sense: he has dominated the industry for a lifetime. I can't tell you how he may have impacted or guided other individuals during their careers but I can speak from personal experience. He inspires me to be better every day than I was the day before.”

MayDoeHas BeensI CanGamesIndividualSpeakViewsCareersInfluenceFootballInspireIndustrySeasonsBasesLifetimeProfoundDecadesMake SenseLeagueContributionAlsLegendsPersonal ExperiencesOaklandRaidersOakland Raiders
Author:Amy Trask
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“During those long years in Oakland public schools, I did not have one teacher who taught me anything relevant to my own life or experience. Not one instructor ever awoke in me a desire to learn more or to question or to explore the worlds of literature, science, and history. All they did was try to rob me of the sense of my own uniqueness and worth, and in the process nearly killed my urge to inquire.”

WorldTryingYearsLongSchoolDesireLiteratureProcessMy OwnTeacherTaughtUrgesRelevantUniquenessPublic SchoolMy Own LifeInstructorsOaklandDesire To Learn
Author:Huey Newton
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“In Indiana we had a queen we named Alice which lived to the ripe old age of eight years and two months and did excellent work in her seventh year. There can be no doubt about the authenticity of this statement. We sold her to John Chapel of Oakland City, Indiana, and she was the only queen in his yard with wings clipped. This, however is a rare exception. At the time I was experimenting with artificial combs with wooden cells in which the queen laid.”

YearsTwoAgeCitiesDoubtMonthsWingsEightStatementsAuthenticityOld AgeCellsExcellentQueensNo DoubtExceptionArtificialYardsRipeTwo MonthsIndianaCombsChapelOaklandExcellent Work
Author:Jay Smith
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