Ten of My Favourite Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib Quotes
Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib, a writer whom I am guessing you love? Here are our 10 best Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib quotes for you to enjoy. At Australia Unwrapped we believe every book has at least one quotable line, and our mission is to find them all. Here you will find Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib’s top 10 popular and famous quotes. Like every good writer Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib made a number of memorable quotes, here are some of our favorites:
About Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib
Hanif Abdurraqib is an Ohio-based poet, essayist, and cultural critic. He has published poetry in Muzzle, Vinyl, PEN American, and other journals. He has published essays and music criticism in The FADER, Pitchfork, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. The Crown Ain’t Worth Much, his debut collection of poetry, was released by Button Poetry in June 2016. The book was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Prize and nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. With Big Lucks, he released a limited edition chapbook, Vintage Sadness, in summer 2017 (you cannot buy it anymore and he apologizes for the inconvenience. In winter 2017, Two Dollar Radio released his first collection of essays, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us. Among other publications, Buzzfeed, Esquire, NPR, Oprah Magazine, Paste, CBC, The Los Angeles Review, Pitchfork, and The Chicago Tribune named it a book of the year. Go Ahead In The Rain: Notes To A Tribe Called Quest was published by University of Texas Press in February 2019. Upon publication, the book became a New York Times bestseller. A Fortune For Your Disaster is the second collection of poems he has published with Tin House. He graduated from Beechcroft High School.
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Popular Quotes
“Home is where the heart begins, but not where the heart stays.”
― Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us
“I know that I stopped thinking about extreme grief as the sole vehicle for great art when the grief started to take people with it. And I get it. The tortured artist is the artist that gets remembered for all time, particularly if they if they either perish or overcome. But the truth is that so many of us are stuck in the middle. So many of us begin tortured and end tortured, with only brief bursts of light in between, and I’d rather have average art and survival than miracles that come at the cost of someone’s life.”
― Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us
“The truth is, if we don’t write our own stories, there is someone else waiting to do it for us. And those people, waiting with their pens, often don’t look like we do and don’t have our best interests in mind.”
― Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us
“Hasn’t that always been the way of it? We all choose our sins, and their measure. The ones we believe will render us unforgivable, and the ones that we will wash off with a morning prayer.”
― Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us
“It’s easy to convince people that you are really okay if they don’t have to actually hear what rattles you in the private silence of your own making.”
― Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us
“It is one thing to be good at what you do, and it is another thing to be good and bold enough to have fun while doing it.”
― Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us
“No matter how obsessed you’ve been with your own vanishing, there will always be someone who wants you whole.”
― Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us
“A person is a whole person when they are good sometimes but not always, and loved by someone regardless.”
― Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us
“There is something about setting eyes on the people who hold you up instead of imagining them.”
― Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us
“It’s in the spirit of male loneliness to imagine that someone has to suffer for it.”
― Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us
10 Famous Quotes by Author Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib
Quotes for all, here you found our selection of 10 Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib quotes. Make sure you help by commenting your best Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib quote below and sharing our favorite authors so we can look them up, read some of their works and give you the best quotes we can find. We hope you enjoyed our top 10 quotes by Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib. However, feel free to comment below if you disagree or would like to include some other great and memorable Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib quotes in our list.
One Final Bonus – Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib Quote
“And What Good Will Your Vanity Be When The Rapture Comes”
says the man with a cart of empty bottles at the corner of church
and lincoln while I stare into my phone and I say
I know oh I know while trying to find the specific
filter that will make the sun’s near-flawless descent look
the way I might describe it in a poem and the man
says the moment is already right in front of you and I
say I know but everyone I love is not here and I mean
here like on this street corner with me while I turn
the sky a darker shade of red on my phone and I mean
here like everyone I love who I can still touch and not
pass my fingers through like the wind in a dream
but I look up at the man and he is a kaleidoscope
of shadows I mean his shadows have shadows
and they are small and trailing behind him and I know
then that everyone he loves is also not here and the man doesn’t ask
but I still say hey man I’ve got nothing I’ve got nothing even though I have plenty
to go home to and the sun is still hot even in its
endless flirt with submission and the man’s palm has a small
river inside I mean he has taken my hand now and here we are
tethered and unmoving and the man says what color are you making
the sky and I say what I might say in a poem I say all surrender
ends in blood and he says what color are you making the sky and
I say something bright enough to make people wish they were here
and he squints towards the dancing shrapnel of dying
light along a rooftop and he says I love things only as they are
and I’m sure I did once too but I can’t prove it to anyone these days
and he says the end isn’t always about what dies and I know I know
or I knew once and now I write about beautiful things
like I will never touch a beautiful thing again and the man
looks me in the eyes and he points to the blue-orange vault
over heaven’s gates and he says the face of everyone you miss
is up there and I know I know I can’t see them but I know
and he turns my face to the horizon and he says
we don’t have much time left and I get that he means the time
before the sun is finally through with its daily work or I
think I get that but I still can’t stop trembling and I close
my eyes and I am sobbing on the corner of church and
lincoln and when I open my eyes the sun is plucking everyone
who has chosen to love me from the clouds and carrying them
into the light-drunk horizon and I am seeing this and I know
I am seeing this the girl who kissed me as a boy in the dairy aisle
of meijer while our parents shopped and the older boy on the
basketball team who taught me how to make a good fist and swing
it into the jaw of a bully and the friends who crawled to my porch
in the summer of any year I have been alive they were all there
I saw their faces and it was like I was given the eyes of a newborn
again and once you know what it is to be lonely it is hard to
unsee that which serves as a reminder that you were not always
empty and I am gasping into the now-dark air and I pull my shirt
up to wipe whatever tears are left and I see the man walking in the
other direction and I chase him down and tap his arm and I say did
you see it did you see it like I did and he turns and leans into the
glow of a streetlamp and he is anchored by a single shadow now
and he sneers and he says have we met and he scoffs and pushes
his cart off into the night and I can hear the glass rattling even
as I watch him become small and vanish and I look down at my
phone and the sky on the screen is still blood red.”
― Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib
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