Post 9 11 Quotes

“In prison, I finally got it. Understood that just like three black men were gangbangers, and three Jews a conspiracy, three Muslims had become a sleeper cell. And later, much later, the pendulum would swing back, and everybody would celebrate progress, the storied tradition of accommodation, on TV talk shows and posters in middle schools. There would be ceremonies, public apologies, cardboard displays. In the interim, however, I threatened order, threatened civilization. In the interim, I too had to adhere to an unwritten code.”
― H.M. Naqvi, Home Boy

“If you drop her, she’ll break, but she’ll cut you, too. She’s tough and tender, enraged and exhausted, withdrawn and outgoing, a pessimist brimming with humanist hope.”
― Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America

“According to AC, serious historical inquiry incorrectly considers the question *what if* to be the turf of Philip K. Dick or comic book titles like *What if the Incredible Hulk Had the Brain of Bruce Banner?* Although historians were not in the business of assigning probabilities to historical events, AC opined they should. 'Look, chum," he once expounded, 'it's not like anything can happen at any time. You have to consider *conditions of possibility*.”
― H.M. Naqvi, Home Boy

“This may seem like a strange thing to say, but these are post-9/11 fantasy. I've read post-9/11 SF already, but this is the first fantasy that had that feel fore me. I don't mea they have allegory, or even applicability. They're their own thing, not a shadow-play of our world. But they have that sensibility, in the same way that Tolkien was writing about Dark Lords in the shadow of Hitler and Stalin and Marion Zimmer Bradley was writing about Free Amazons during the seventies upswell of feminism.”
― Jo Walton, What Makes This Book So Great: Re-Reading the Classics of Science Fiction & Fantasy