Quotes from Adrian Nicole LeBlanc

Coco, however, courted consequence; she was still a girl, and she still assumed a connection between what she was doing and what she wanted and what might result.

A fog of despair so pervaded the ghetto that the smallest gesture of rebellion could seem like a bold, piercing light. Bad, said with a fond expression, was almost always a compliment.

Love was the most interesting place to go, and beauty was the ticket.

In the subtle tyranny of that moment beat the pulse of Cesar's neighborhood—the bid for attention, the undercurrent of hostility for so many small needs ignored and unmet, the pleasure of holding power, camouflaged in teasing, the rush of love.

A lifetime assault of contradictory messages–to be sexy, to respect, that all men were dogs but without them women were nothing–reinforced her sense of powerlessness and futility.

The legal challenge was a lot like the challenge of demonstrating the impact of racism or poverty or substandard housing: How could you untangle the structural injustices from the self-inflicted damage? How could you separate neglect from malice, the intended from the unintended harms?

It wasn't often that anyone admitted their mistakes to Mercedes; the default posture of poverty was defense. Cesar told her that he hoped his degree would make Mercedes proud of him when he came home.

The best comics enlist you to take accountability for who you are, whether you like it or not.

It shouldn't be a matter of who deserves help or not, but of whether we want to be a country that allows its neediest to continue to need. Condemnation of individuals and their choices mutes all these other really important logistical questions about funding and budget and politics.

A big part of reporting is just being present. You have to show up ten days in a row to get the one telling detail.

Adrian Leon LeBlanc, my dad and my namesake, his keen joy in observing people and the world is the reason I became a journalist.

My dad taught me that language was a powerful tool.

As a reader, when the writer gets sentimental, you drift, because there's something fishy going on there. You recognize a moment that's largely about the writer and the writer's own need to believe in something that might not in fact exist. As a reader, you think, 'Where did the story go? Where did the person I'm reading about go?'

Serious loss brings you into one of the world's silent fraternities.

There's one thing I know for sure: When I'm most opinionated, my writing sucks.

My earnestness at the injustices I witnessed when I was writing 'Random Family' may have been my gravest reportorial offense during the early years of reporting. When I discuss the book with students, they often ask me how I could 'stand by' in the face of so much suffering; the egregiousness wasn't my powerlessness but my surprise.

It's hard for me to understand how poverty can be invisible to so many people, since I see it everywhere. Readers sometimes think this world is so different; on the one hand, they feel connected to the people I'm writing about, and on the other hand, they're saying their lives are a world away.

Satisfaction isn't a state that comes easily to me.

I like to say, 'You get as much story as you can take.' But you have to effectively render it.

Illness transforms the things you most fear into the things you crave and would hold onto if you could.

What one reads in the newspaper and what one sees on the street are absolutely not the same.

I think you end up on the lucky side, or you don't.