A Quote by Kehinde Wiley

Whereas I remember being in Dakar, in Senegal, where I have my third studio, and street casting, and I remember looking at the faces of the young men that we were speaking to through translators and so on, showing them the books. Complete - completely different response.
I remember how my mom would take me on the subway from Queens to Broadway. We'd go to the offices of casting agents. Many doors were slammed in our faces. I was just a boy, but I remember that well.
The Beatles were in a different stratosphere, a different planet to the rest of us. All I know is when I heard 'Love Me Do' on the radio, I remember walking down the street and knowing my life was going to be completely different now the Beatles were in it.
When I see a lot of young faces in the audience, it's just sort of sinking in how important that is. Because you're old enough now to identify them very strongly as being young - whereas before, of course they were young, because you were young. Now it's not like that.
I remember when I was a kid looking at different types of film and really examining the grains of them. I remember even looking at the ink streaks.
The odd thing about being a writer is you do tend to lose yourself in your books. Sometimes it seems like real life is flickering by and you're hardly a part of it. You remember the events in your books better than you remember the events that actually took place when you were writing them.
Most remember the groundbreaking first in sports; few remember the third or fourth to follow in those tracks. That's not downplaying anyone's achievements but rather recognizing that there comes a time when simply being there is no longer good enough for the record books.
I remember when I started modelling and being the only non-white girl in the fashion show. I was grateful to be there, but at the casting, there had been many beautiful women of different descriptions, and I was wondering why they were not being represented.
I remember being at school during morning meeting and looking around at everybody, 350 kids, saying a prayer. We're all very young and no one knows what it means, and I remember feeling strange that people were just repeating words that they didn't understand. I refused to participate. For some reason I always rejected it, but respectfully.
I want you to try and remember what it was like to have been very young. And particularly the days when you were first in love; when you were like a person sleepwalking, and you didn’t quite see the street you were in, and didn’t quite hear everything that was said to you. You’re just a little bit crazy. Will you remember that, please?
I don't remember titles of books or authors from when I was young. I remember the title of only one book, which was 'The Timber Toes.' I remember it was a family of little wooden people who lived in the woods, and for some reason that stayed with me.
I really lucked out with that song ["As Cool As I Am"]. Men were becoming much more comfortable with all the different facets and parts of their identity, including their gentler, funnier, sillier, nurturing parts. They started showing up. There was so much exploration of gender at that time. Women were showing up with the range of ways of being female in the world and men were showing up with the range of being male in the world.
Other people, so I have read, treasure memorable moments in their lives: the time one climbed the Parthenon at sunrise, the summer night one met a lonely girl in Central Park and achieved with her a sweet and natural relationship, as they say in books. I too once met a girl in Central Park, but it is not much to remember. What I remember is the time John Wayne killed three men with a carbine as he was falling to the dusty street in Stagecoach, and the time the kitten found Orson Welles in the doorway in The Third Man.
If your kids remember anything, it's the fact that you were there. You're gonna fail every day, you're gonna make mistakes, you're gonna do things wrong, but as long as you're there, they remember that. And I see that. Our kids are so young, but they know that we're at every basketball game. We take them with us to places, we engage them. It's not helicopter parenting we just keep them around us. It's that bond. If you lose that it's hard to get it back. I think by showing up, kids, they're always connected to you.
It's enough for you to do it once for a few men to remember you. But if you do it year after year, then many people remember you and they tell it to their children, and their children and grandchildren remember and, if it concerns books, they can read them. And if it's good enough, it will last as long as there are human beings.
I remember as a young child, during one of my frequent trips to the local library, spending hours looking at book after book trying in vain to find one that had my name on it. Because there were so many books in the library, with so many different names on them, I’d assumed that one of them — somewhere — had to be mine. I didn’t understand at the time that a person’s name appears on a book because he or she wrote it. Now that I’m twenty-six I know better. If I were ever going to find my book one day, I was going to have to write it.
I remember seeing people who I thought were so confident and exuberant. I remember being young and watching Oprah and being like, 'Damn. That lady is so confident. She can talk to anybody.'
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!