Top 280 Angie Thomas Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “This is worse than denying him. I thought the worst of him. Like everybody else.”

— Angie Thomas

52. “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

53. “Not everything deserves your energy.”

— Angie Thomas

54. “Everybody wants to talk about how Khalil died,” I say. “But this isn’t about how Khalil died. It’s about the fact that he lived. His life mattered. Khalil lived!” I look at the cops again. “You hear me? Khalil lived!”

— Angie Thomas

55. “You gotta love people enough to let them go, especially when you’re the reason they’re gone.”

— Angie Thomas

56. “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

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

— Angie Thomas

58. “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

59. “That wasn’t some li’l friend of hers. That was her son, you hear me? Her son!” Her voice cracks. “She carried that boy, birthed that boy. And you have no right to judge her.”

— Angie Thomas

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

— Angie Thomas

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

— Angie Thomas

62. “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

63. “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

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

— Angie Thomas

65. “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

66. “My neighborhood is a war zone.”

— Angie Thomas

67. “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

68. “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

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

— Angie Thomas

70. “But Ms. Ofrah says this interview is the way I fight. When you fight, you put yourself out there, not caring who you hurt or if you’ll get hurt. So I throw one more blow, right at One-Fifteen. “I’d ask him if he wished he shot me too.”

— Angie Thomas

71. “Hoedom is universal.”

— Angie Thomas

72. “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

73. “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

74. “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

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

— Angie Thomas

76. “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

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

— Angie Thomas

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

— Angie Thomas

79. “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

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

— Angie Thomas

81. “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

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

— Angie Thomas

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

— Angie Thomas

84. “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

85. “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

86. “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

87. “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

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

— Angie Thomas

89. “Basically, Williamson Starr doesn’t give anyone a reason to call her ghetto.”

— Angie Thomas

90. “I’ll always be my dad’s daughter if nothing else.”

— Angie Thomas

91. “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

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

— Angie Thomas

93. “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

94. “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

95. “We want freedom,′ I say. ‘We want the power to determine the destiny of our black and oppressed communities.”

— Angie Thomas

96. “No lie, every time a sneaker is cleaned improperly, a kitten dies.”

— Angie Thomas

97. “It’s about way more than that though. It’s about Seven. Sekani. Kenya. DeVante. It’s also about Oscar. Aiyana. Trayvon. Rekia. Michael. Eric. Tamir. John. Ezell. Sandra. Freddie. Alton. Philando. It’s even about that little boy in 1955 who nobody recognized at first – Emmett.”

— Angie Thomas

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

— Angie Thomas

99. “One-Fifteen I’m often asked why Starr never refers to the police officer who shot Khalil by his name, only by his badge number. Since her father has always instilled in her that names have power, it’s hard for Starr to give the officer any sort of power by referring to him by his given name. By using his badge number, it’s her way of refusing to humanize him – because in her mind, what he did to her and Khalil in that moment was anything but humane.”

— Angie Thomas

100. “Some things are worth more than money, baby” -Jay.”

— Angie Thomas