Some Brilliant Quotes from Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime
I’m not an avid book reader. I only finished two full-length English-language books, a novel and a biography, in my entire life. But I was so lucky to have read a genius, hilarious, heart-warming, and thought-provoking book just on my second read, and that’s the biography one. It’s so far from what many think of biographies — suck, boring, and hard to read — it’s going to blow your mind, I promise.
I’m not going to explain what the book is all about and such. Um, actually I am, but in flash. The book is about Trevor Noah’s life of being born as a result of a crime — the sexual intercourse between his white father and black mother (yes, that was a crime in the apartheid era of South Africa) — and his journey of navigating being a mixed-raced child in the era, being close to poverty, and being his mom’s son (this book could also classify as a parenting book honestly). Anyway, I’m here to present you some of the brilliant quotes the book unashamedly throws every minute. So, enjoy!
Disclaimer: I include almost all of the serious quotes and only a few jokes so it doesn’t take away the excitement if you do decide to read the book. Thus, this article doesn’t represent the book’s humor level. And there might be some offensive jokes.
On poverty
“So many black families spend all of their time trying to fix the problems of the past. That is the curse of being black and poor, and it is a curse that follows you from generation to generation. My mother calls it ‘the black tax.’”
“We tell people to follow their dreams, but you can only dream of what you can imagine, and, depending on where you come from, your imagination can be quite limited.”
“People don’t want to be rich. They want to be able to choose.”
“People always lecture the poor: ‘Take responsibility for yourself! Make something of yourself!’ But with what raw materials are the poor to make something of themselves?
People love to say, ‘Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll eat for a lifetime.’ What they don’t say is, ‘And it would be nice if you gave him a fishing rod.’ That’s the part of the analogy that’s missing.”“The tricky thing about the hood is that you’re always working, working, working, and you feel like something’s happening, but really nothing’s happening at all.”
“The hood is also a low-stress, comfortable life. All your mental energy goes into getting by, so you don’t have to ask yourself any of the big questions. Who am I? Who am I supposed to be? Am I doing enough? In the hood you can be a forty-year-old man living in your mom’s house asking people for money and it’s not looked down on. You never feel like a failure in the hood, because someone’s always worse off than you, and you don’t feel like you need to do more, because the biggest success isn’t that much higher than you, either. It allows you to exist in a state of suspended animation.”
On crime
“The hood made me realize that crime succeeds because crime does the one thing the government doesn’t do: crime cares. Crime is grassroots. Crime looks for the young kids who need support and a lifting hand. Crime offers internship programs and summer jobs and opportunities for advancement. Crime gets involved in the community. Crime doesn’t discriminate.”
“It’s easy to be judgmental about crime when you live in a world wealthy enough to be removed from it. But the hood taught me that everyone has different notions of right and wrong, different definitions of what constitutes crime, and what level of crime they’re willing to participate in. If a crackhead comes through and he’s got a crate of Corn Flakes boxes he’s stolen out of the back of a supermarket, the poor mom isn’t thinking, I’m aiding and abetting a criminal by buying these Corn Flakes. No. She’s thinking, My family needs food and this guy has Corn Flakes, and she buys the Corn Flakes.”
“The more time I spent in jail, the more I realized that the law isn’t rational at all. It’s a lottery. What color is your skin? How much money do you have? Who’s your lawyer? Who’s the judge?”
Other thought-provoking quotes
“We spend so much time being afraid of failure, afraid of rejection. But regret is the thing we should fear most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal question you will never have the answer to. ‘What if…’ ‘If only…’ ‘I wonder what would have…’ You will never, never know, and it will haunt you for the rest of your days.”
“‘He thinks he’s the policeman of the world,’ she (Trevor’s mother) said. ‘And that’s the problem with the world. We have people who cannot police themselves, so they want to police everyone else around them.’”
“It is so easy, from the outside, to put the blame on the woman and say, ‘You just need to leave.’ It’s not like my home was the only home where there was domestic abuse. It’s what I grew up around. I saw it in the streets of Soweto, on TV, in movies. Where does a woman go in a society where that is the norm? When the police won’t help her? When her own family won’t help her? Where does a woman go when she leaves one man who hits her and is just as likely to wind up with another man who hits her, maybe even worse than the first? Where does a woman go when she’s single with three kids and she lives in a society that makes her a pariah for being a manless woman? Where she’s seen as a whore for doing that? Where does she go? What does she do?”
On his incredible mom and their relationship
“It was a normal thing in our neighborhood. Everybody knew: That Trevor child would come through like a bat out of hell, and his mom would be right there behind him. She could go at a full sprint in high heels, but if she really wanted to come after me she had this thing where she’d kick her shoes off while still going at top speed. She’d do this weird move with her ankles and the heels would go flying and she wouldn’t even miss a step. That’s when I knew, Okay, she’s in turbo mode now.
When I was little she always caught me, but as I got older I got faster, and when speed failed her she’d use her wits. If I was about to get away she’d yell, ‘Stop! Thief!’ She’d do this to her own child.”“My mom made sure English was the first language I spoke. If you’re black in South Africa, speaking English is the one thing that can give you a leg up. English is the language of money. English comprehension is equated with intelligence. If you’re looking for a job, English is the difference between getting the job or staying unemployed. If you’re standing in the dock, English is the difference between getting off with a fine or going to prison.”
“If my mother had one goal, it was to free my mind. My mother spoke to me like an adult, which was unusual. In South Africa, kids play with kids and adults talk to adults. The adults supervise you, but they don’t get down on your level and talk to you. My mom did. All the time. I was like her best friend. She was always telling me stories, giving me lessons, Bible lessons especially. She was big into Psalms. I had to read Psalms every day. She would quiz me on it. ‘What does the passage mean? What does it mean to you? How do you apply it to your life?’ That was every day of my life. My mom did what school didn’t. She taught me how to think.”
“My mom would always say, ‘My job is to feed your body, feed your spirit, and feed your mind.’ That’s exactly what she did, and the way she found money for food and books was to spend absolutely nothing on anything else. Her frugality was the stuff of legend.”
“When a parent is absent, you’re left in the lurch of not knowing, and it’s so easy to fill that space with negative thoughts. ‘They don’t care.’ ‘They’re selfish.’ My one saving grace was that my mom never spoke ill of him. She would always compliment him. ‘You’re good with your money. You get that from your dad.’ ‘You have your dad’s smile.’ ‘You’re clean and tidy like your father.’ I never turned to bitterness, because she made sure I knew his absence was because of circumstance and not a lack of love. She always told me the story of her coming home from the hospital and my dad saying, ‘Where’s my kid? I want that kid in my life.’ She’d say to me, ‘Don’t ever forget: He chose you.’ And, ultimately, when I turned twenty-four, it was my mom who made me track him down.”
“‘Trevor, remember a man is not determined by how much he earns. You can still be the man of the house and earn less than your woman. Being a man is not what you have, it’s who you are. Being more of a man doesn’t mean your woman has to be less than you.’”
“‘We’ve caught your son shoplifting batteries,’ he said. ‘You need to come and fetch him.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Take him to jail. If he’s going to disobey he needs to learn the consequences.’”“‘I know you see me as some crazy old bitch nagging at you,’ she said, ‘but you forget the reason I ride you so hard and give you so much shit is because I love you. Everything I have ever done I’ve done from a place of love. If I don’t punish you, the world will punish you even worse. The world doesn’t love you. If the police get you, the police don’t love you. When I beat you, I’m trying to save you. When they beat you, they’re trying to kill you.’”
Random funny quotes
“But the more we went to church and the longer I sat in those pews the more I learned about how Christianity works: If you’re Native American and you pray to the wolves, you’re a savage. If you’re African and you pray to your ancestors, you’re a primitive. But when white people pray to a guy who turns water into wine, well, that’s just common sense.”
“Black church was rough, I won’t lie. No air-conditioning. No lyrics up on Jumbotrons. And it lasted forever, three or four hours at least, which confused me because white church was only like an hour — in and out, thanks for coming. But at black church I would sit there for what felt like an eternity, trying to figure out why time moved so slowly. Is it possible for time to actually stop? If so, why does it stop at black church and not at white church? I eventually decided black people needed more time with Jesus because we suffered more.”
“‘Because I don’t know how to hit a white child,’ she (Trevor’s grandmother) said. ‘A black child, I understand. A black child, you hit them and they stay black. Trevor, when you hit him he turns blue and green and yellow and red. I’ve never seen those colors before. I’m scared I’m going to break him. I don’t want to kill a white person. I’m so afraid. I’m not going to touch him.’ And she never did.”
“‘Mom, these are fake,’ I said.
‘I don’t see the difference.’
‘Look at the logo. There are four stripes instead of three.’
‘Lucky you,’ she said. ‘You got one extra.’”“One of my uncles stopped calling me Trevor. He called me ‘Terror’ instead.”
“‘My child, you must look on the bright side.’
‘What? What are you talking about, ‘the bright side’? Mom, you were shot in the face. There is no bright side.’
‘Of course there is. Now you’re officially the best-looking person in the family.’”
I admit I was still astonished trying to compile and copy-paste those quotes and was literally laughing every time. Hope you do too. Cheers. And stay safe, stay sane!
