A Quote by Arthur Jafa

I remember when someone told me phones were going to have cameras on them, and I thought that was the dumbest idea I'd ever heard. Why would you want a camera on your phone? But as we see the impact of it, it has allowed for a mass verification of what black people have been saying.
I hate cameras. I hate cameras and I hate camera phones. The camera's my worst enemy and my best friend. It's the way I convey my emotions to the world without saying a word, so I use it. People always say, 'You come alive as soon as the camera's on!'
Why would anyone get married and have babies? That's the dumbest idea I've ever heard in my life. Or the scariest thing I've ever heard in my life.
I can't complain about anything. It's like saying, "I don't like talkies." Time marches on and I don't care how people watch my movies as long as they see them. I don't care if they're on their phone. Believe me, if you ever want to watch my early films they would look a lot better on your phone than they would on a movie screen. The smaller the better.
I remember being like, 12 years old, and this was in the days before cell phones, or at least, having a cell phone. Some girls, I can't even remember who they said they were, called and said they had a crush on me. But it turned out to be a prank, and I thought that was just straight up nasty, you know what I'm saying? You're just sort of developing. You're insecure, your bones are growing... you have trouble sleeping. And all of a sudden, someone's pranking you on top of that? It's tough growing up.
The sign at the entrance to my gym locker room says, no cell phones please, cell phones are cameras. They are not. A camera is a Nikon or a Leica or Rolleiflex, and when you strike someone with one, they know they have been hit with something substantial.
I remember seeing 'Snow White' and saying to my mother, 'Will there ever be a Chocolate Brown?' She said 'Probably. Why not?' I just never thought the first black princess would be me.
Ever since my children were born, the moment I looked at them I was crazy about them. Once I held them I was hooked. I am addicted to my children sir. I love them with all my heart and the idea of someone telling me I can't be with them, I can't see them everyday. Well, it's like someone saying I can't have air.
Why have you been staring at me ever since we met? Because I’m not the Gail Wynand you’d heard about. You see, I love you. And love is exception-making. If you were in love you’d want to be broken, trampled, ordered, dominated, because that’s the impossible, in the inconceivable for you in your relations with people. That would be the one gift, the great exception you’d want to offer the man you loved. But it wouldn’t be easy for you.
We were orbiting around the idea of intent and context. We would take the bus into work, and if you said, 'Here's a shirt you might like,' and I open it on my mobile phone, I'm not going to pull out my credit card and wallet. We thought, 'How does someone do this? An e-mail to yourself, or you try to remember?'
Sometimes I try to remember things my mother told me about the awful way he was raised. But why does he have to keep on going? Why would you take something bad out of your mouth and hand it to another, saying, Here, eat this?
I've always been attracted to unusual eyewear. I thought glasses were an interesting accessory, depending on the shape of your face. People would always ask me, "Why are your frames so large?" And I would say, "The bigger to see you!" And that shut them up.
Ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. That was the whole idea, right? That‘s why we went. I am reluctant to let that fact disappear down the memory hole, because if — as the war ends, or at least starts to end — if, at this time, the history of the war is written as us going there to topple the regime of a bad man when that frankly isn‘t why were told that we were going there — Aren‘t we still at risk of making this horrific mistake again? And, aren‘t we letting the people who foisted the WMD idea on us, not many years ago, aren‘t we sort of letting them get away with it?
I always revered people that I thought had an idea and proceeded through with it. I guess I've been that way since the day I called my father and told him I was going to study acting and maybe try to see if I could do well with that, and he told me: "Don't do that. You don't want to do that, that's just dream stuff. Get a legitimate job and move forward."
To be honest, I didn't think I would be here for this album [Give the People What They Want]. I thought I was going to die. When the doctor came in by himself and told me I had cancer, it was frightening. He told me he got it and there would be six months of chemo. I really thought people would be promoting my record without me here to enjoy it. But I'm here.
If I were just curious, it would be very hard to say to someone, I want to come to your house and have you talk to me and tell me the story of your life. I mean people are going to say, You're crazy. Plus they're going to keep mighty guarded. But the camera is a kind of license. A lot of people, they want to be paid that much attention and that's a reasonable kind of attention to be paid.
What kind of motivated me to join the Black Panther Party was that I, along with some of the comrades that I was working with in New York, had heard about the Black Panther Party, and they were doing things that we wanted to do in New York, and we thought that would be a better vehicle than the vehicle that we had going on in New York. They were better organized, and they already had their Ten-Point Platform and Program, and people already heard about them. So we decided that we would join the party, when given a chance.
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