Top 40 Ibi Zoboi Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “We were too heavy. Not with our bags. Not with our bodies. But with our burdens.”

— Ibi Zoboi

2. “Sometimes love is not enough to keep a community together. There needs to be something more tangible, like fair housing, opportunities, and access to resources. Lifeboats and lifelines are not supposed to just be a way for us to get out. They should be ways to let us stay in and survive. And thrive.”

— Ibi Zoboi

3. “But then I realize that everyone is climbing their own mountain here in America. They are tall and mighty and they live in the hearts and everyday lives of the people.”

— Ibi Zoboi

4. “Every book is a different hood, a different country, a different world. Reading is how I visit places and people and ideas. And when something rings true or if I still have a question, I outline it with a bright yellow highlighter so that it’s lit up in my mind, like a lightbulb or a torch leading the way to somewhere new.”

— Ibi Zoboi

5. “There’s no such thing as a half sister.”

— Ibi Zoboi

6. “Blackness is indeed a social construct. Within the context of American racial politics, there can be no Black without white. No racism without race. But the prevalence of culture is undeniable.”

— Ibi Zoboi

7. “Because the thing about sharp corners is, the right turns can bring you back home.”

— Ibi Zoboi

8. “We’re not gonna throw away the past as if it meant nothing. See? That’s what happens to whole neighborhoods. We built something, it was messy, but we’re not gonna throw it away.”

— Ibi Zoboi

9. “Creole and Haiti stick to my insides like glue – it’s like my bones and muscles. But America is my skin, my eyes, and my breath. According to my papers, I’m not even supposed to be here. I’m not a citizen. I’m a “resident alien.” The borders don’t care if we’re all human and my heart pumps blood the same as everyone else’s.”

— Ibi Zoboi

10. “We have to become everything that we want. Consume it. Like our lwas.”

— Ibi Zoboi

11. “Ah, mija! There you go! Rivers flow. A body of water that remains stagnant is just a cesspool, mi amor! It’s time to move, flow, grow. That is the nature of rivers. That is the nature of love!”

— Ibi Zoboi

12. “So trying to come to America from the wrong country is a crime?”

— Ibi Zoboi

13. “I killed chivalry myself with a pocketknife.”

— Ibi Zoboi

14. “We have more space and less time. And the love we had for our whole neighborhood now only fits into this wood-frame house in the middle of a quiet block. We don’t know the people who live across the street or on either side of us.”

— Ibi Zoboi

15. “Say it just like that. Let the words slide out and don’t be so uptight about it. It’s just English, not too complicated.”

— Ibi Zoboi

16. “My first meal in America is one that I make for myself and eat by myself. I wonder if this is a sign of things to come.”

— Ibi Zoboi

17. “Even as you kept telling me that I’m becoming a woman, you never let me go out into the world to be free.”

— Ibi Zoboi

18. “Death parked itself on that corner of American and Joy, some days as still as stone, other days singing cautionary songs and delivering telltale riddles, waiting for the day when one girl would ask to open the gates to the other side.”

— Ibi Zoboi

19. “I forget every single thing in the world, every heartache, every tear, every pain as I watch that performance. The dancers, the music, the lights, the people in the theater are all so beautiful that I want to wear them on my skin for the rest of my life.”

— Ibi Zoboi

20. “If hot red is for anger and rage, pink is the color of a soft burning – hot enough to light up the dark corners of sadness and grief, but cool enough to be tender, innocent, open.”

— Ibi Zoboi

21. “IT’S A TRUTH universally acknowledged that when rich people move into the hood, where it’s a little bit broken and a little bit forgotten, the first thing they want to do is clean it up. But it’s not just the junky stuff they’ll get rid of. People can be thrown away too, like last night’s trash left out on sidewalks or pushed to the edge of wherever all broken things go. What those rich people don’t always know is that broken and forgotten neighborhoods were first built out of love.”

— Ibi Zoboi

22. “We fold our immigrant selves into this veneer of what we think is African American girlhood. The result is more jagged than smooth. This tension between our inherited identities and our newly adopted selves filters into our relationships with other girls and the boys we love, and how we interact with the broken places around us.”

— Ibi Zoboi

23. “Chantal’s English is like that of the newspeople on TV. Her voice is high and soft, and every sentence sounds like a question, even when she gives them my name and my mother’s name. It’s as if she isn’t sure of anything and this uniformed man behind the desk and the computer will have all the answers in the universe.”

— Ibi Zoboi

24. “I dreamed of going to the most remote places on this earth to dig for old bones, older than people. Before humans and their stupid ideas. Before hate. Maybe even before love, too. Dinosaurs just existed. No lectures, no books, no language. No world-conquering Europeans and no defeated everybody else. Just those powerful, unrestrained creatures roaming the planet.”

— Ibi Zoboi

25. “Late June in Brooklyn is like the very beginning of a party-when the music is really good, but you know that it’s about to get way better, so you just do a little two-step before the real turn-up starts.”

— Ibi Zoboi

26. “I have always thought of Bushwick as home, but in that moment, I realize that home is where people I love are, wherever that is.”

— Ibi Zoboi

27. “And we stepped onto the tipping scales of Lady Justice.”

— Ibi Zoboi

28. “The only way to survive hell is to walk through.”

— Ibi Zoboi

29. “On the day of my conviction I memorize my inmate number my crime my time On the day of my conviction I forget my school ID number my top three colleges my class schedule.”

— Ibi Zoboi

30. “This is the stuff my mother practiced back in Haiti. She is a mambo, a priestess. This is how we pray. We see the magic in everything, in all people.”

— Ibi Zoboi

31. “Dad was blowing up my phone and I was ignoring him. I knew he’d want me to come back just so he could yell at me and tell me how irresponsible I am and that I shouldn’t even think about going away to college because I couldn’t remember a simple thing like buying food for the house.”

— Ibi Zoboi

32. “We aren’t thugs in this family. We respect the police,” he’d said. Like BLM was about respecting authority, not demanding the right to live.”

— Ibi Zoboi

33. “Manman says that in order for the lwas to help us, we sometimes have to embody them, let them mount us so they take over our thoughts.”

— Ibi Zoboi

34. “Okay, but don’t underestimate bougie rage. That’s on another level.”

— Ibi Zoboi

35. “I wrap my arms around his shoulders, pull him in, and give Darius a deep, long kiss for what feels like forever.”

— Ibi Zoboi

36. “Papi reads as if the world is running out of books. Sometimes he’s more interested in stories and history than people.”

— Ibi Zoboi

37. “With Wakanda’s help.”

— Ibi Zoboi

38. “The county jail behind the courtroom is called the tombs because it’s where the system buries their dead.”

— Ibi Zoboi

39. “Yes and no. It’s Vodou.” “Voodoo? Oh, I get it now. You put a spell on me?” “No, that’s not real Vodou. We have spirit guides – our lwas are like saints and I pray to them for help.”

— Ibi Zoboi

40. “I could pull myself together and be my own damn sidekick, road dog, and ride-or-die chick.”

— Ibi Zoboi

41. “Motown, J Dilla, Slum Village.”

— Ibi Zoboi

42. “That’s disgusting – you don’t kiss girls, you understand? We don’t have gays in our family,” he said. Mom eventually got him calmed down, but I never forgot the way his eyes bulged as he yelled “GAYS.”

— Ibi Zoboi