Ben Zambito

“Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of the Zulus”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

“For most of two chapters in Matthew (6 and 7), Jesus warns us against the unconscious social payoffs in all public encounters: prayer, fasting, almsgiving, clothing, money, class systems, social judgments, and possessions.”
― Richard Rohr, Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps

“Americans believe in the reality of “race” as a defined, indubitable feature of the natural world. Racism—the need to ascribe bone-deep features to people and then humiliate, reduce, and destroy them—inevitably follows from this inalterable condition. In this way, racism is rendered as the innocent daughter of Mother Nature, and one is left to deplore the Middle Passage or the Trail of Tears the way one deplores an earthquake, a tornado, or any other phenomenon that can be cast as beyond the handiwork of men.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

“When the journalist asked me about my body, it was like she was asking me to awaken her from the most gorgeous dream. I have seen that dream all my life. It is perfect houses with nice lawns. It is Memorial Day cookouts, block associations, and driveways. The Dream is treehouses and the Cub Scouts. The Dream smells like peppermint but tastes like strawberry shortcake. And for so long I have wanted to escape into the Dream, to fold my country over my head like a blanket.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me