Jess B

“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

“We were both failures, she and I. We'd both run and been brought back, she in days, I in only hours. I probably knew more than she did about the general layout of the Eastern Shore. She knew only the area she'd been born and raised in, and she couldn't read a map. I knew about towns and rivers miles away― and it hadn't done me a damn bit of good! What had Weylin said? That educated didn't mean smart. He had a point. Nothing in my education or knowledge of the future had helped me to escape. Yet in a few years an illiterate runaway named Harriet Tubman would make nineteen trips into this country and lead three hundred fugitives to freedom.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“It's a family thing. It is an annoying and time-wasting thing.”
― Candice Carty-Williams, Queenie

“Registrars like to do this kind of thing now and again to show you they've 'still got it', like your uncle squeezing himself into his Speedos despite the gasps of terrified onlookers around the hotel pool.”
― Adam Kay, Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas