Jess B

“I say, why start from nothing if you can start with everything? We've already got a civilization.'
'No. We haven't. We're just living on the edge of someone else's, like fleas on a dog's back. If the dog drowns, the fleas drown, too.”
― Robert C. O'Brien, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

“He moved uncomfortably. "Reading's too much trouble. Mr. Jennings said I was too stupid to learn anyway."
"Who's Mr. Jennings?"
"He's the schoolmaster."
"Is he?" I shook my head in disgust. "He shouldn't be. Listen, do you think you're stupid?"
"No." A small hesitant no. "But I read as good as Daddy does already. Why should I have to do more than that?"
"You don't have to. You can stay just the way you are. Of course, that would give Mr. Jennings the satisfaction of thinking he was right about you.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“At church, she told us they ate one cracker and took one swallow of red wine and the rest of the time there was a man talking. She did not know exactly what he said, but he said it for a long time. Sometimes, just to give her hands something to do, she would pick up the heavy book in front of her seat and open it. Even though she didn't understand everything they were singing, she moved her lips anyway. It was just like that at the citizenship ceremony. Whether or not you understood the oath you made, you had to move your lips.
After a while, for some reason she seemed to lose interest in going. She didn't say why.”
― Souvankham Thammavongsa, How to Pronounce Knife: Stories

“From the beginning, he'd understood what every three-year-old knows: that the vague threat is way scarier than knowing how much trouble, exactly, you're facing.”
― Francine Prose, After