The void is my friend.
There is a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up; holding, holding on, this motion, unlike a ship’s, smooths and contains the rocker. It’s an inside kind – wrapped tight like skin. Then there is a loneliness that roams. No rocking can hold it down. It is alive, on its own. A dry and spreading thing that makes the sound of one’s own feet going seem to come from a far-off place.
page 315
[..] language is so central to our understanding of each other that when we encounter language that doesn’t actually reflect the thoughts, ideas, or communicative intent of another person, it’s difficult not to imagine some humanlike mind behind it.
page 7, Chapter 1: An Introduction to AI Hype, The AI Con by Emily M. Bender & Alex Hanna
He braces his hands on the edges of the sink and looks at his reflection, surprised to see that he looks normal, almost calm. He feels as if he’s been turned inside out, as if he just learned that a part of his heart is on the outside of his body, in the possession of somebody else entirely.
page 97, Andy
Necessities helped people survive, but joyful excess gave them life.
page 90
The paradox–and a fearful paradox it is–is that the American Negro can have no future anywhere, on any continent, as long as he is unwilling to accept his past. To accept one’s past–one’s history–is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought. How can the American Negro’s past be used? The unprecedented price demanded–and at this embattled hour of the world’s history–is the transcendence of the realities of color, of nations, and of altars.
My Dungeon Shook