Best Harlem Quotes to Inspire, Uplift & Motivate You Every Day

“I'm from Harlem.”

“I've been able to provide for my family, move out of Harlem and travel the world.”

“I credit a lot of my success to being from Harlem, growing up there.”

“Harlem has always been the nexus of music, politics, culture, criminal figures.”

“People don't really want to hear me say this, but a black person who will give a million dollars to the Museum of Modern Art but won't give a million to the Studio Museum in Harlem is simply mistaken.”

“I don't think the arts would have been as meaningful to me if I hadn't grown up in Harlem.”

“I don't know who I would be if I weren't this child from Harlem, this woman from Harlem. It's in me so deep.”

“I'm from Harlem, born and raised there.”

“It's still amazing, but when I was growing up, Harlem was the Mecca of black culture. I was so inspired by it, the aspirational feeling you'd get spending time there. Experiences that were really specific to that place.”

“Harlem is a very family-oriented neighborhood, and it always has been.”

“We can't have Harlem become one borough for the rich.”

“People don't really know, but I went to Dance Theatre of Harlem in New York.”

“Harlem World' is all about me doing my thing.”

“I had a paper route at eight years old in Harlem.”

“I always say that Sheri Martell was that one thing that put Harlem Heat on the map, made us a legitimate tag team.”

“Nonresidents have a tendency to rush their visits to Harlem.”

“For a long time, Nella Larsen was the mystery woman of the Harlem Renaissance. In the late 1920s, she published two sophisticated novels, 'Quicksand' and 'Passing,' and then her writing life came to an end. She died in obscurity in 1964.”

“I'm from the burbs. I've been in the hood, but I don't live there. I have lived in the hood, but I don't live there anymore. I lived in Harlem, and that was crazy, even though Harlem is a lot nicer than it used to be.”

“I grew up on 135th Street. I grew up on the poor side of New York. I grew up in Harlem.”

“I'm sort of obsessed with Harlem. Just its history. My father did the music for a play called 'The Huey P. Newton Story,' and they did a lot of work in Harlem. So as a little girl, I spent a lot of time in Harlem Library.”

“I've played with jazz and toyed with it when I used to live near the St. Nicholas Pub in Harlem.”

“I've lived all over the world, but Harlem is very special to me, and when I decided to open a restaurant near my home, I didn't want it to be business as usual.”

“My parents grew up during the Harlem renaissance.”

“We had the skirts with the slits up the side, sort of tough, sort of Spanish Harlem cool, but sweet too.”

“Growing up in Harlem, I was always in the parks playing ball.”

“I like to go hear jazz late-night up in Harlem.”

“You cannot mention Harlem Heat without mentioning Sherri Martel at the same time.”

“I always wanted to do something I knew I could love to wake up and do every day, and rap was just second nature to me, growing up in Harlem. I never really had to try.”

“There were the people that believed in me when I was walking around Spanish Harlem, saying that I was going to be a Hollywood actress. They were like, 'Yeah, you could do it!'”

“I want people to take pride in Spanish Harlem. These are people that everyone in the community could relate to... people who mean something special to us.”

“In Harlem, Facebook was big. Kids would make Facebook 'families,' where they would change their last name on Facebook and have the same last name as their friends. I had this girl I was talking to, and she changed her last name to West, so I changed mine to West, too. It wasn't until later that I took the 't' off.”

“As a Latino growing up in Spanish harlem, it's not easy trying not to be hot-headed.”

“We don't windsurf in Harlem.”

“It is important to have permanent safe spaces in Harlem.”

“Michael Ralph brilliantly plays the street prophet, a West Indian who foreshadows the Harlem riot.”

“Just growing up in Harlem, it didn't matter what you had to do to get fresh - you would do it.”

“Where I'm from in Harlem, everybody look like a rapper.”

“You know, I grew up Black in America, I grew up close to Spanish Harlem where we ain't have much money, but we was like all friends and cool and playing and going to school together.”

“I love Harlem, it's like a second home to me.”

“Whose little boy are you?”