Claudia Rankine Quotes

12 Sourced Quotes

The subject who speaks is situated in relation to the other. This privilege of the other ceases to be incomprehensible once we admit that the first fact of existence is neither being in itself nor being for itself but being for the other, in other words, that human existence is a creature. By offering a word, the subject putting himself forward lays himself open and, in a sense, prays.

Claudia Rankine
For me, working on a piece is like playing chess.

Claudia Rankine
In many conversations I realize that the thing that's being said is really not the point at all.

Claudia Rankine
You can never quite access the image in people's minds that you are being compared with.

Claudia Rankine
I wanted to write a book that was beyond what usually gets communicated in language.

Claudia Rankine
The past is a life sentence, a blunt instrument aimed at tomorrow.

Claudia Rankine
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
The worst injury is feeling you don't belong so much to you.

Claudia Rankine
Define loneliness?
Yes.
It's what we can't do for each other.

Claudia Rankine
Where is the safest place when that place
must be someplace other than in the body?

Claudia Rankine
We're all together inside a system that scripts and constructs not just behavior but imagination.

Claudia Rankine
You should speak out because if you don't, it's going to harm you.

Claudia Rankine