Top 280 Angie Thomas Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “I’m starting to think being a parent mean you don’t get to have much yourself. All my energy, my money, and my time go to him.”

— Angie Thomas

52. “Church is full of people with plenty to say and nothing to do. You’d think some of them would help us instead of talk about us, but I guess it’s easy to say you love Jesus and harder to act like him.”

— Angie Thomas

53. “Soms doe je niets verkeerd en gaat het toch fout. De sleutel is om het altijd goed te blijven doen.”

— Angie Thomas

54. “Funerals aren’t for dead people. They’re for the living.”

— Angie Thomas

55. “You’d be surprised at how many of us want justice in this case,” says Uncle Carlos. “But of course, classic Maverick. Every cop is automatically a bad cop.”

— Angie Thomas

56. “Intentions always look better on paper than in reality.”

— Angie Thomas

57. “And at the end of the day, you don’t kill someone for opening a car door. If you do, you shouldn’t be a cop.”

— Angie Thomas

58. “Good days don’t last forever though.”

— Angie Thomas

59. “People like us in situations like this become hashtags, but they rarely get justice. I think we all wait for that one time though, that one time when it ends right.”

— Angie Thomas

60. “It seems like they always talk about what he may have said, what he may have done, what he may not have done. I didn’t know a dead person could be charged in his own murder, you know?”

— Angie Thomas

61. “I’m lying in bed. Khalil is lying in the county morgue.”

— Angie Thomas

62. “Keep Pushing Mav,” Rico Says ,” Tough situations don’t last. Tough People Do.”

— Angie Thomas

63. “This is worse than denying him. I thought the worst of him. Like everybody else.”

— Angie Thomas

64. “You need Saturday to recover and Sunday to repent.”

— Angie Thomas

65. “Because it won’t change if we don’t say something.”

— Angie Thomas

66. “But there’s only so long you can blame what you’ve been through for what you do. At some point, you gotta blame yourself.”

— Angie Thomas

67. “That’s when I learned that when people die, they sometimes take the living with them.”

— Angie Thomas

68. “Problem is it would’ve taken Black Jesus to convince my parents to let me come. Now Black Jesus will have to save me if they find out I’m here.”

— Angie Thomas

69. “Oh. Well, seven supposed to be holy and the number of perfection,” I say. “I think I wanna make Maverick his middle name. Everybody say he look like me. Since that’s the case, I want him to be the best version of me. The perfect Maverick Carter.”

— Angie Thomas

70. “Sometimes I catch her staring at me, likes she’s looking for herself. Or she sees Dad and can’t look away.”

— Angie Thomas

71. “This is about Us, with a capital U; everybody who looks like us, feels like us, and is experiencing this pain with us.”

— Angie Thomas

72. “Are you serious right now?” Hailey asks. “What’s wrong with saying his life matters too?” “His life always matters more!” My voice is gruff, and my throat is tight. “That’s the problem!” “Starr!”

— Angie Thomas

73. “Black Jesus hangs from the cross in a painting on the hallway wall, and Malcolm X holds a shotgun in a photograph next to him.”

— Angie Thomas

74. “My neighborhood is a war zone.”

— Angie Thomas

75. “This is Popkenchurch. Popkenchurch is when you buy fried chicken and Cajun rice from Popeyes, biscuits from KFC, and fried okra and corn on the cob from Church’s.”

— Angie Thomas

76. “And one was at the hands of a person who was supposed to protect her! What, you think if you live next door to them, they’ll treat you different?”

— Angie Thomas

77. “Yeah. A li’l damaged, but alive. I’m gon’ try something different with them. Putting them in new soil can be like hitting a reset button.”

— Angie Thomas

78. “If it’s revealed that I was in the car, what will that make me? The thug ghetto girl with the drug dealer?”

— Angie Thomas

79. “Ne-gro, please. If I kill Tyrone, I’m going to prison. If a cop kills me, he’s getting put on leave. Maybe.”

— Angie Thomas

80. “I can’t breathe like I’m drowning in the tears I refuse to shed.”

— Angie Thomas

81. “I’ve taught myself to speak with two different voices and only say certain things around certain people. I’ve mastered it.”

— Angie Thomas

82. “T-H-U-G L-I-F-E. Meaning what society give us as youth, it bites them in the ass when we wild out. Get it?” “Damn.”

— Angie Thomas

83. “Others are fighting too, even in the Garden, where sometimes it feels like there’s not a lot worth fighting for. People are realizing and shouting and marching and demanding. They’re not forgetting. I think that’s the most important part. Khalil, I’ll never forget. I’ll never give up. I’ll never be quiet. I promise.”

— Angie Thomas

84. “Roses can bloom in the hardest conditions.”

— Angie Thomas

85. “You can destroy wood and brick, but you can’t destroy a movement.”

— Angie Thomas

86. “Sometimes one person’s hero is another person’s monster, or in my case, father.”

— Angie Thomas

87. “Jay’s a people person. I’m more of a “yes, people exist, but that doesn’t mean I need to talk to them” person.”

— Angie Thomas

88. “And I think you’re brilliant, talented, courageous, beautiful. You’re my miracle. But you’re the only one who can say who you are with authority. So, who are you?”

— Angie Thomas

89. “I once posted a picture of Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old black boy who was murdered for whistling at a white woman in 1955. His mutilated body didn’t look human. Hailey texted me immediately after, freaking out. I thought it was because she couldn’t believe someone would do that to a kid. No. She couldn’t believe I would reblog such an awful picture. Not long after that, she stopped liking and reblogging my other posts.”

— Angie Thomas

90. “Our friendship is based on memories. What do we have now?”

— Angie Thomas

91. “People are realizing and shouting and marching and demanding. They’re not forgetting. I think that’s the most important part.”

— Angie Thomas

92. “If bravery is a medical condition, everybody’s misdiagnosed me.”

— Angie Thomas

93. “That’s why people are speaking out, huh? Because it won’t change if we don’t say something.”

— Angie Thomas

94. “You’re a classic case of oppositional defiant disorder.”

— Angie Thomas

95. “They probably heard me crying. Great. What’s worse than being the Angry Black Girl? The Weak Black Girl.”

— Angie Thomas

96. “But one of the nurses took my hand” – Momma grabs my hand again – “looked me in the eye, and said, ‘Sometimes you can do everything right and things will still go wrong. The key is to never stop doing right.’” She holds my hand the rest of the drive.”

— Angie Thomas

97. “It’s kinda like how we have to do with ourselves. Get rid of the things that don’t do us any good. If it won’t help the rose grow, you’ve gotta let it go.”

— Angie Thomas

98. “I don’t have to wait around for her to change. I can let go.”

— Angie Thomas

99. “Son, one of the biggest lies ever told is that black men don’t feel emotions. Guess it’s easier not to see us as human when you think we’re heartless. Fact of the matter is, we feel things. Hurt, pain, sadness, all of it. We got a right to show them feelings as much as anybody else.”

— Angie Thomas

100. “Look, you can’t be worried about what folks think... There will always be someone with something to say, but it doesn’t mean you gotta listen.”

— Angie Thomas