Darnell Lamont Walker

"none of my art is based on how others think i should have done it."

"The thing about oppression is this: when you hold someone down, you, too, have to be there to make sure they don't move."

"The oppressor is never as free as they think they are"

"I speak and help some folks only because I believe they may be god in flesh, testing me for politeness."

"Waking up in a room with no natural light does something to a man. no windows. I’m almost afraid to die. I fear my soul won’t make it out."

"Death pulls people from our spaces so often and we accept it as our final payment for having been here and having lived, however big or small. We don’t always have time to notice how things have changed in the absence of some of them. But then death pulls away someone we love, and we find that time. In here, we notice everything; growing grass and fingernails, and songs that end in a minor key. We are too sad to do anything else but watch a clock, applying seconds, minutes, and hours to the trauma and the lacerations. Time, the forever healer, they say. We find the time to wonder how everyone else is moving on, around our paralyzed selves. Ourselves unsure of roads and trees and birds and things. It all blurs and words aren’t words anymore. We find the time to attempt to figure a way to rethink everything we thought about this world and why we came to it."

"Not everything set on fire will rise."

"Gonna pretend to be a deaf mute who knows no sign one day, meet a woman, and we'll write for the rest of our lives."

"The masters and overseers were so good at employee development, in their absence, the employees still achieved the company's mission"

"Anyone and anything can survive the daylight. It's night that's the hardest to live."

"Sometimes, some of you speak about god, and I mistake him for an abusive lover you're trying to escape."

"Tell me what you’re looking for and i will become that for you. I can sacrifice my inner freedoms for you without looking twice at my old journals and solid promises I made to myself about such things. But you must be prepared to kill me when the smiles are no longer frequent. Do it while I sleep. While I hold your hand. Do it fast, baby. Do it fast."

"They sit there shouting "Don't do it." Someone told them revolution looked like the Cosby Show. A slight tug with a good lesson. Revolution is a tough struggle between what was and what needs to be."

"You ball up your fist each time you hear about an unfound injustice in the world. That makes me your brother."

"An HBCU that is not inherently revolutionary is irrelevant."

"My ideas fuck like rabbits."

"Why not fall in love with an artist? Otherwise there are no letters, pictures, paintings and songs for you when you wake up."

"Sorrow is what I feel for people who aren’t doing what they love. I keep my distance from them as though they’re contagious. They are, I believe."

"The saddest thing about death, whether it's our own or someone we care for, is when the world doesn't stop when we do."

"The saddest thing about death, whether it's our own or someone we care for, is when the world doesn't stop we do."