Words matter. These are the best Charles M. Blow Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I’m trying to illuminate how perilously narrow we draw the concepts of masculinity and sexuality in our male culture – particularly in black male culture – and to help people to see that there’s room enough for everyone.
My mother was a stout woman with a man’s name – Billie. She was plain-faced with honest eyes – no black grease by the lash line, no blue powder on the lids, eyebrows not plucked up high and thin.
An illustration is a visual editorial – it’s just as nuanced. Everything that goes into it is a call you make: every color, every line weight, every angle.
America is not static. America is striving. And sometimes, America requires critique. Jingoism is an avoidance of realism. You can simultaneously love and be disappointed in the object of your love, wanting it to be better than it is. In fact, that is a measure of love. Honest critique is a pillar of patriotism.
When I won my way to the international science fair, I didn’t want to embarrass myself. It was the first time I was going to be away from home, the first time taking an airplane. I went to the local library, checked out every single etiquette book, and I read those books like I was uncovering some sort of treasure.
There can be moments in your life where you may feel attracted to someone depending on circumstance, depending on the person of one gender or another, and sometimes where that is less of an influence in your life.
While the word ‘bisexual’ was technically correct, I would only slowly come to use it to refer to myself in part because of the derisive connotations. But, in addition, it would seem to me woefully inadequate and impressionistically inaccurate.
I have always loved science, but I have always loved the arts – drawing, painting and, yes, writing – more.
America is a living idea. It isn’t only the tenets of its founding, but also the terms of its future. Every day, we make America. Seeking to preserve and enshrine one vision of this country from one period of its past robs it of what makes it magical: its infinite possibility for adjustment.
Often, those with the most to lose as a result of a poor policy move are the most vulnerable and most marginalized. Those folks need a voice, and I will endeavor to be that voice.
I write a lot about disadvantaged people, particularly vulnerable children, because I feel that that’s who I was. That is familiar terrain for me. And I try to write about things that are very close to me because I want people to feel the passion that I have for the subject.
One thing the gay rights movement taught the world is the importance of being visible.
I was always a relatively quiet and introspective kid.
My father was short for a man, with a child’s plaything for a name – Spinner. He had flawless dark brown skin and a head full of big, wet-looking curls, black as oil. And he had the smile of a scoundrel – the kind of smile that disarmed men and undressed women.
The first memory I have in the world is of death and tears. That is how I would mark the beginning of my life: the way people mark the end of one. My family had gathered at Papa Joe’s house because Mam’ Grace was slipping away, only I didn’t register it that way. For some reason I thought that it was her birthday.
