Spoiler Alert: This summary and review contains spoilers.
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In this post, you’ll find collected quotes & .gifs from media covered on Wherever I Look during 2018.
Notable Quote Compilations
TV Series Collected Quotes: Black Love
Quotes From Angie Thomas’ Book: The Hate U Give
TV Series Collected Quotes: Love Is
Quotes From The Facebook Watch Series: Red Table Talk
Work
Money Related
It’s not what you want, it’s what you negotiate.
– Angela (Love Is: Season 1/ Episode 6)
The method might be different but the cash smells just the same
— Pose: Season 1/ Episode 1 “Pilot”
The interesting thing about money is none of us talk about it, but we all show it.
— Suze Orman (The Breakfast Club)
[The biggest mistakes that women make when it comes to finances] They say yes out of fear out of fear of what other people will think of them versus no out of love for themselves.
— Suze Orman (The Breakfast Club)
Advancement
A goal without a plan is just a wish.
— Stacy | The Princess Switch
One can’t let the perfect be the enemy of good.
– Aunt Lydia (The Handmaids Tale: Season 2/ Episode 12)
The realities of having it all means you got to figure out how to balance it all.
— Queen Sugar: Season 3/ Episode 6 “Delicate and Strangely Made”
One job ain’t nothing if it don’t lead to another.
— Blanca (Pose: Season 1/ Episode 8)
Whenever you think about somebody’s life and you say ‘I wanna be her,’ you gotta take everything that come along with it. You can’t just take the blessings.
— Sherri Shepherd (Breakfast Club – 7/19/2018)
“Whoever got anywhere knowing their place?”
— Pose: Season 1/ Episode 3 “Giving and Receiving”
“I’ve […] learned how to keep my dignity, even when I’m kneeling down for scraps under the table.”
— Pose: Season 1/ Episode 2 “Access”
You’ll make mistakes on the path to your vision, identify and correct them. You’ll lose folks on the path to your vision, mourn and replace them. You’ll face challenges on the path towards your vision, access and usurp them. Your greatest asset will be your ability to adjust without losing alignment with what anchors you to your goal.
— Amanda Seales
Be wary of those who stopped “because of” instead of continued “despite.”
— Amari Sali
The things that come easily to us are not what define us. We find the edges by challenging ourselves.
— Episode 3 “Everyone is Soigné”
“You always have a choice between your ambition and your ego, and you have to be very clear which one you’re choosing all the time.”
— Full Producers Roundtable 2018 (Amy Pascal)
Nobody is your competition except for the person you’re trying to advance over. So it is like, who is in your purview? Get them out, why are they even there? Why did you even give them the opportunity to be better than you?
— Yvonne Orji (The Breakfast Club)
Innovation
“If you’re afraid of being wrong and if you’re afraid of people saying “You were wrong, what an idiot, why did they do that?” then it’s a really rough job. […] You can’t be afraid of the public humiliation of everyone saying you don’t know what you’re doing. You can’t be driven by that. You have to be driven by what you actually wanted to see.”
— Amy Pascal
“It just feels like everyone wants something different, but no one wants to do anything different to get it.”
— Donald Glover Rips Marvel in ‘Deadpool’ Script After Exiting Animated Series
“For an artist, greatness happens when you can take something organized and make it feel like it was improvised.”
— Pose: Season 1/ Episode 2 “Access”
“What Ghetto means is innovation.”
— Amanda Seales (Smart, Funny, and Black at The Bell House (8/4))
“I’d rather say, ‘I’m sorry I did’ rather than ‘I wish I had,’ you know?
— Quincy
I’m not fucking crazy […] I’m just goal oriented.
— Annie | Manic (s1e2)
Adversity
[The] only thing they love more than saying they gave one of us a chance is seeing us squander it.
— “Chapter 5” Dear White People
“I will not be sidelined, sidetracked, or sidestepped. Or put in a damn corner and told to wait my turn. Not another day.”
— Queen Sugar: Season 3/ Episode 2 “Of Their Sojourn Here”
When you are “othered,” you better come in there with something so phenomenal, and so amazing, that even though it comes from a world that isn’t their’s, there is something about it they can connect to. There has to be the universal law where it’s about a person just trying to survive or trying to live and even if those people don’t look like them or come from the same walk of life, they can still say, ‘I get it. I want to watch that.’
— Lena Waithe (Hollywood Reporter – Drama Showrunners)
Be honest about what [your] weaknesses are and reinforce them with all the other people who you are working with.
— Bruce Miller (Hollywood Reporter – Drama Showrunners)
[…] sometimes I feel like we focus so much on what’s difficult that we forget to celebrate our accomplishments.
— Ms. Whitaker | Atypical: Season 2/ Episode 8 “Living At An Angle”
[…] before I confront others, I gotta learn how to confront myself.
— Latin History for Morons
Your thoughts, feelings, words, and actions need to be one.
— Suze Orman (The Breakfast Club)
I don’t actually like that [aggressive] side of me. I like the intention behind it, but I don’t like the way I’m coming at it, like a fighter.
— Leah – Red Table Talk s1e13
Legacy
“A lot of this generation want hits, I want history.”
— Tracy Morgan (Desus & Mero)
Spiritual
“People say, ‘Well, do you go to church?” and I say, ‘Not often because all the sinners are there.’”
— Erika Alexander
“Everybody say they praying for me, but ain’t nobody willing to fight for me.”
— Black Lightning: Season 1/ Episode 2 “Lawanda: The Book of Hope”
“You got to be willing to do it no matter what. If you have the desire, and the ability and faith, you’re gonna make it.”
— Iyanla Vanzant – Quoting Barry White (Breakfast Club)
“Rejection is God’s protection, that will provide you redirection”
— Charlamagne the God & Iyanla Vanzant (Breakfast Club)
The harder you try to be righteous, the more your lies steadily increase.
— Alicia (How Not To Summon a Demon Lord)
I think a lot of brilliant people can be religious. I think also, at the same time, a lot of brilliant people suspend their better senses when they are religious.
— Michael Arceneaux (The Breakfast Club)
That’s the thing that no one tells you about evil. They make it seem like there are two clearly marked paths with flashing signs pointing out each way: sin, redemption. […] But the truth is, evil comes when the righteous path is so hidden, it just looks like there’s only one way out.
— Wendy | Ozark: Season 2/ Episode 7 “One Way Out”
[…] to stand by myself […] feels as close to a return to my old life as I’ve come. Or maybe it’s my new life just beginning to announce itself.”
— Becoming: Page XII
“He will always prepare you for, what he has prepared for you”
– Niecy Nash | Black Love s2e5
Happiness isn’t the absence of sadness. It’s living and it’s being in the mystery and the adventure of this life in God’s world with others, with God.
— Bishop James | Greenleaf s2e9
Your good plan is not always God’s plan for you.
— Charlamagne Tha God – The Breakfast Club
Health
Physical Health
“Your health is not a debt you just cancel. The body collects.”
— Adora | Sharp Objects: Season 1/ Episode 7 “Falling”
Mental Health
Anyone will continue to leech off you if you continue to give.
Cocoa Brown – The Breakfast Club (10.16.2018)
“‘I’m sorry but,’ is a meaningless sentence.”
— Sweetbitter: Season 1/ Episode 1 “Salt”
Pain motivates you, pain is a motivating factor for you to make a change in your life to do something different.
— Episode 2 “Surviving Loss”
“If you stay rigid, eventually you’ll break.”
— 9-1-1: Season 1/ Episode 4 “Worst Day Ever”
“It’s time to give yourself permission to want things and to have them.”
— Sweetbitter: Season 1/ Episode 6 “It’s Mine”
“It’s never a bad decision to choose yourself.”
— Pose: Season 1/ Episode 4 “The Fever”
Comedy is tragedy sped up.
— Kristin Chenoweth (BUILD Series)
My demons are not remotely tackled. They’re just mildly concussed.
– Camille (Sharp Objects: Season 1/ Episode 2)
“There’s so many of us that are in the situations we’re in because there’s nobody to pick up the phone, to hug you, to tell you, to remind you to keep going.
— Mara Brock Akil – The Breakfast Club
When I got diagnosed […] it was one of the happiest days of my life. My doctor telling me I had a disease instead of a character flaw.
— Matt | Sorry For Your Loss (s1e4)
“Treat yourself like you’re somebody you care about.”
— Red Table Talk
When I was young, I just knew somebody was coming to rescue me. A knight in shining armor, an angel, a guru, a priest, a director, a producer, a bird, a flower, a tree, a cloud, the moon—anything. And after all that praying and hoping and wishing, it came down to looking in the mirror, taking responsibility for my choices—every last one of them. And it wasn’t until I asked, asked, asked,—you have to ask—that someone did listen with a sincere smile and stood by my side and guided me gently. So, go beyond yourself and fight for it, damnit. Ain’t nobody promised you a rose garden without painful-ass thorns. Go beyond yourself, reach out, and you will touch a hand that will lift you up.
— 305 (The Mother of Black Hollywood)
“If you feel like you’re in a tug of war, just drop the rope.”
— Debra (Dirty John: S1E1)
Recovery
“This is a minor setback for a major comeback.”
— Night School
Because I have survived, I owe. Because I still have a smile on my face and am in good health, I owe. Because I live with bipolar disorder and thrive, I owe. Because I made it to the other side of sex addiction, I owe. Because my generation has left behind a world of chaos and environmental deterioration that the next is being made to clean up, I owe. Because while my role as the Mother of Black Hollywood started out as just that—a part to play—the platform has afforded me the opportunity to have so many young people come to me seeking answers to why, how, what, when… please, Miss Lewis? I owe. I owe it to the world to share what I have learned on my journey.
— 303 – 304 (The Mother of Black Hollywood)
“Moving on doesn’t mean running away.”
— Zoey (Escape Room)
Scars are maps of who you are.
— Vida: Season 1/ Episode 5
I say “go on” and not “move on” because in some ways, we’ll never completely move on from what happened. […] And I don’t say “get back to normal” because life will never be normal again.
— Episode 13 “Bye”
“In order to change your life, you got to change your lifestyle.”
— Charlagmagne Tha God
“We all walk at different speeds. Sooner or later you catch your breath.”
— The Chi: Season 1/ Episode 6 “Penetrate a Fraud”
“I don’t run away anymore, I run toward.”
— Altered Carbon: Season 1/ Episode 10 “The Killers”
“You are not trapped, you are waiting.”
— Altered Carbon: Season 1/ Episode 4 “Force of Evil”
“The final stage of healing is using what happens to you to help other people. That is healing in itself.”
— Seeing Allred
“When you name the demons in your life, then you can eradicate them. But before you name them, they can haunt you forever.”
— Keke Palmer (Source: Breakfast Club Interview)
It’s hard, it’s painful, to recognize you are the common denominator for the vast majority of your problems.
— “EP 4: Girls Trippin’” Red Table Talk (Gabrielle Union)
Once you get a control and an understanding of who you are, no one can use you against you.
— Taraji P. Henson (The Breakfast Club)
“We need to make friends with our own wounds, or we will be tempted to despise the wounded.”
— Sarah Silverman
Decline
My worst fear […] is not to be bad but unremarkable.
— Blythe | You; s1e3
I think you’re confused, and lost, but that’s only natural when you get lied to so many times.
— Wendy | Ozark: Season 2/ Episode 7 “One Way Out”
“Were you sheltered or were you silenced?”
— “Broken Reality: Hazel E.” Iyanla: Fix My Life
No matter how many reasons there might be ‘why,’ there are always more ‘why not.’
— Episode 13 “Bye”
I don’t know where the pride ends and the weakness begins.
— Grace | Greenleaf (s3e5)
Sometimes when a person drowns, they thrash around so much, they bring down anyone trying to rescue ‘em. Even if they don’t mean to.
— Richard | Sorry For Your Loss (s1e3)
Sit in shit too long, it stops smelling.
— Jenifer Lewis (The Breakfast Club)
You put too much on your plate you gonna break the whole damn table.
— Miss Bruce | Star s3e6
In order to be understood, you got to understand.
— Tracy Morgan (The Breakfast Club)
“I would never leave, but I am shrinking.”
— An Oversimplification of Her Beauty
Sometimes you have to take Sad Street in order to get to Happy Town.
— Alexa and Katie: Season 2
Learning
“In this country, what we call education is actually indoctrination.”
— Jane Elliott | Red Table Talk: Season 1/ Episode 14
Sometimes people inspire you without you even noticing.
— Bad Seeds
Testimony is so much more powerful than advice.
— Jada (Red Table Talk: S1E19)
Personal Betterment
“Read things that don’t necessarily pertain to you.”
— Charlamagne the God (Breakfast Club – 5/11/2018)
Life Lessons
“Imagination is a weapon. Those who lack it are first to die.”
— Goblin Slayer s1e2
Sometimes the more generous act is to just keep things to yourself.
— Sabrina | Sorry For Your Loss s1e7
“Ignorance is your enemy. Knowledge is your weapon.”
— BPM (Beats Per Minute)
Tell me, and I forget. Teach me, and I remember. Involve me, and I learn.
– Anne (Anne with an E: Season 2/ Episode 10)
With aging comes clarity.
— 297 (The Mother of Blackhood)
Einstein said that life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you always need to move ahead.
— Carolina | How To Get Over a Breakup
Prejudice is the emotional commitment to ignorance.
— Adrienne | Red Table Talk: Season 1/ Episode 14
Hard Truths
I can explain it to you, but I can’t understand it for you.
— Andi Mack: Season 2/ Episode 18
“I have learned the difference between a love that liberates and a love that feels like it’s always been free.”
— Queen Sugar: Season 3/ Episode 13 “From On The Pulse Of Morning”
“Good people die, but we’re not bad people for surviving.”
— Michael | MDMA
The fact is many parents don’t, or can’t, give you everything you need. Mine couldn’t. So I went in search of substitutes. I often advise young people in this situation to understand there are probably people around every corner who will take them under their wing and help them on their way. But you have to ask.
— 104 (The Mother of Black Hollywood)
You have to go to the scariest place to find out who are you, who you’re gonna be.
— Amy | Sorry For Your Loss s1e10
You don’t truly know a person, until they don’t get what they want.
Jeannie Mai – The Breakfast Club (10.12.2018)
Social
Sympathy is not a currency. It is not to be traded, it is a feeling.
— Mae | Greenleaf s3e8
“[…] the honest truth is we’re scared. Scared that maybe we’re a person we wouldn’t like very much if we met. Scared we’re people who are gonna let our communities down. Scared we’re people our parents might think different of if they really knew. [If not] scared of becoming our parents.”
— Grown-ish: Series Premiere
“[…] Everybody knows the secret now that when a woman sleeps with a man right away, it’s not because we don’t respect ourselves, it’s because we don’t respect you.”
— Ali Wong: Hard Knock Wife
I don’t charge for my advice, though it is worth a fortune.
– Rachel (Anne with an E: Season 2/ Episode 1)
Representing someone is not the same as endorsing them.
— Alec Berg (The Hollywood Reporter)
The only measure of an action is its consequence.
— Henry | Elizabeth Harvest
Figure out who you are and do it on purpose.
— Dumplin‘
Justice
Justice is not about striking down evil, but making people aware that evil exists in the world.
— Goblin Slayer S1e5
[…] when you don’t have money, honesty’s a luxury you can’t afford.
— Lu | Elite s1e5
“[…] think is a strong word. Think is a strong word when combined with right. Right should be known, not thought.”
— Kiri: Season 1/ Episode 3
“Rich kids get mischief and poor kids get pathologized and incarcerated.”
— Anna Deavere Smith
Is this a movement or a primal scream?
— “Chapter 8” Dear White People
“But what is scared to us? It’s like water to a fish. There’s no point in dreaming of a life without having to be scared.”
— Pose: Season 1/ Episode 4 “The Fever”
Cultural
My experiences don’t define me [but] they certainly shape me.
— Diane Guerrero
Some people worry an immigrant will take their job. Here’s a thought: If someone shows up, doesn’t speak the language, has no connections or support network and takes your job on day one, maybe America doesn’t need you.
— The Fix “Let’s Fix Immigration” – Jimmy Carr
“Comedy is fueled by oppression, by the lack of power, by abandonment, by sadness and disappointment, and humiliation.”
— The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
Relationships
Love for me isn’t what I can give you. Love for me is what I’m willing to sacrifice for you.
— Kebba | Ready To Love s1e1
“I think I’m very well understood by many people, and misunderstood by those who wish to misunderstand because they have an agenda that is different than mine.”
— Seeing Allred
“People push you, and then get surprised when you trip.”
— Amanda Seales – The Breakfast Club (2/1/2018)
“You’ve gotten by on your charm for so long that you haven’t developed a character.”
— Sweetbitter: Season 1/ Episode 1 “Salt”
I had to learn that it was okay to let things go and I wasn’t letting people go.
— Episode 2 “Getting Down The Aisle”
Love didn’t fail you, someone who didn’t know how to love failed you.
— “Side Effects of Insecurity.” – Small Doses (with Amanda Seales)
“The right kind of no is better than the wrong kind of yes.”
— “Let Go” 9-1-1
Being a victim is also comfortable for everybody else. Because when you take accountability for yourself and your own healing, a lot of people lose a bit of control. It’s easier to control a victim than it is to control a healed, evolved person.
— “EP 4: Girls Trippin’” Red Table Talk (Gabrielle Union)
I say no! And no used to be so terrifying because no means a boundary and if you put up a boundary, maybe people won’t come back.
— “EP 4: Girls Trippin’” Red Table Talk (Gabrielle Union)
You’re not hard to get at all, you’re hard to earn.
— Set It Up
You like because, and you love despite.
— Set It Up
Lies are a form of disrespect.
— Blanca (Pose: Season 1/ Episode 7)
Great people make you better.
– Whoopi Goldberg (Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind)
[…] You are defined by what you say “No” to.
— Michael B. Jordan (Per Lacy Rose) – The Hollywood Reporter
May your heart remain breakable, but never by the same hand twice.
— Taylor Swift: Reputation Stadium Tour
We’re beautiful stories, we just don’t belong in the same book.
— Tiffany (Ready To Love: S1E11)
“Unfortunately, you have not mastered the art of sustaining platonic arrangements in the midst of extreme romantic attraction. All of the rationale you formulate to explain her current disinterest in you is simply a way of ignoring your many faults. The armor of stoicism you wear when you are in love.”
— An Oversimplification of Her Beauty
“[…] realism, pessimism, and cynicism are so much safer than the alternatives. You avoid disappointment by not indulging in your yet to be experienced desires. But you do disable your dreams in so doing. Their nature is a cause-and-effect thing. You must free them to work on you, and only then will they oblige you and come true.”
— An Oversimplification of Her Beauty
Even if we didn’t know the context, we were instructed to remember that context existed. Everyone on earth, they’d tell us, was carrying around an unseen history, and that alone deserved some tolerance.
— Becoming: Page 7
“Generally speaking, with a few notable exceptions, those that desire your company do not interest you in a way that would provoke you to set aside time to engage them. Those that do interest you, those for whom you would manufacture time, do not live in your vicinity, or do not seem so interested in you as you in them.”
— An Oversimplification of Her Beauty
If you are out there and you want to attract somebody, fall in love with yourself.
– Tina Lawson | Black Love s2e5
Family
We think we’re going to kill our parents by confronting them. But people, including our parents, are often very much able to hear the truth. They may not take it well, but nobody dies from honesty.
— 217 (The Mother of Black Hollywood)
“We can’t choose our parents, but we can choose what traits to take from them.”
— The Quad: Season 2/ Episode 4 “I Am Not Your Negro”
For people who are supposed to love unconditionally, families seem to have a lot of conditions.
— Owen | Maniac (s1e8)
Romantic
You’re never the right woman for the wrong man.
— Michelle Williams (The Breakfast Club)
“That doesn’t change you being my first love, but you can’t be my last.”
— Star: Season 2/ Episode 13 “Forward (E)Motion”
“Imagine going about your day knowing someone’s carrying you in their mind. That has to be the best part of being in love—the feeling of having a home in someone else’s brain.”
— “Page 43” Leah on the Offbeat
“Do you want to stay married or do you just not want another divorce?”
— Black Love: Season 2/ Episode 3 “Accountability”
“If you thought back then I couldn’t endure the tough times with you, why would you assume the I could live the good life you wanted with you now?”
— Us and Them (Hou Lai De Wo Men)
[…] if a kiss is such a big idea, then why is it such a small word? It should be long and difficult to say.
– Anne (Anne with an E: Season 2/ Episode 5)
The funny thing about it, is that it’s [love] the very thing that we were created for, yet it’s the place we struggle the most.
—Niecy Nash | Black Love s2e5
Miscellaneous
Some people got forethought. They got enough sense to move out of the way when a truck is coming. Other people got hindsight. Best they can do is get the license plate number after they got run other. Some people got neither.
— Percy | Greenleaf s3e8
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