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Poetry is probably the last gift economy. Part of the negotiation is to understand that you're going to do something you really want to do, so you're going to take whatever life comes with that.

Claudia Rankine

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Claudia Rankine
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: January 1
Playwright
Poet
Professor
Writer
Kingston
Jamaica
Really
Lasts
Life
Last
Understand
Negotiation
Comes
Gift
Part
Poetry
Take
Probably
Going
Economy
Something
Whatever

More quotes by Claudia Rankine

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You want to belong, you want to be here. In interactions with others you're constantly waiting to see that they recognize that you're a human being. That they can feel your heartbeat and you can feel theirs. And that together you will live - you will live together.
Claudia Rankine
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I also found it funny to think about blackness as the second person. That was just sort of funny. Not the first person, but the second person, the other person.
Claudia Rankine
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I want to believe that in any relational moment a person understands that the other person in front of them is just another human being.
Claudia Rankine
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So you're just moving along and suddenly you get this moment that breaks your ability to continue, and yet you continue. I wanted those kinds of moments. And initially people would say, I don't think I have any. Their initial reaction was to render invisible those moments weaved into a kind of everydayness.
Claudia Rankine
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People expect black women to be angry, irrationally so, without reason. They think we are animals and we go around like the Wild Things.
Claudia Rankine
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I am invested in keeping present the forgotten bodies.
Claudia Rankine
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Poetry has no investment in anything besides openness. It's not arguing a point. It's creating an environment.
Claudia Rankine
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If you make a mistake, then you should own that mistake.
Claudia Rankine
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You become a role model because of what you do as a person. There's a certain point where being a role model might come from standing up for yourself and getting rid of emotion that doesn't belong to you, emotion that is being brought on because of racist actions of others.
Claudia Rankine
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I don't think people want to look at problems. They want a continuous narrative, an optimistic narrative. A narrative that says there's a present and a future - and what was in the past no longer exists.
Claudia Rankine
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I always took note of them, because I think if you're in the black or brown body, you're negotiating them all the time. It's like women taking note of sexism. It's a kind of incoherency that you are constantly negotiating.
Claudia Rankine
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You can’t put the past behind you. It’s buried in you it’s turned your flesh into its own cupboard. Not everything remembered is useful but it all comes from the world to be stored in you.
Claudia Rankine
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Define loneliness? Yes. It's what we can't do for each other.
Claudia Rankine
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If you admit to being racist, it says you acknowledge that you are being driven by projections and stereotypes that were formed in the creation of our country. Racism is deeply rooted in America.
Claudia Rankine
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I'm not comfortable, for myself and for others. And yet, one has these people whom you trust, have faith in, whom you believe see what you see, and then you come up against a moment where you feel suddenly tossed out. So I was really interested in those moments.
Claudia Rankine
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Where is the safest place when that place / must be someplace other than in the body?
Claudia Rankine
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The past is a life sentence, a blunt instrument aimed at tomorrow.
Claudia Rankine
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One of the things that I think about is: How do you make moments that float, transparent? Moments that could just float away. How do you make a body accountable for its language, its positioning? Why not make a body accountable for its language?
Claudia Rankine
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Each of these failures for me is a failure of communication, via a mode of communication that can be violent or meant to behave violently. Butler provides a way of thinking about how language becomes an instrument of violence. And why we feel it as such.
Claudia Rankine
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My tendency is to want to say to the person, Do you understand why I feel this way? I usually do say that. And sometimes it doesn't go well. By this I mean we hit an impasse again. Not that I need to hear exactly what I want to hear, but I need to know I am heard. Those moments make for a better friendship. But I can't let it go. For good or b
Claudia Rankine