Sam

“I killed a plant once because I gave
it too much water. Lord, I worry
that love is violence.”
― José Olivarez, Citizen Illegal

“The Giant, once well buried, now stirs.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, The Buried Giant

“Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story

“There is a pirate in the basement.
(The pirate is a metaphor but also still a person.)
(The basement could rightly be considered a dungeon.)
The pirate was placed here for numerous acts of a piratey nature considered criminal enough for punishment by those non-pirates who decide such things.
Someone said to throw away the key, but the key rests on a tarnished ring on a book that hands on the wall nearby.
(Close enough to see from behind the bars. Freedom kept in sight but out of reach, left as a reminder to the prisoner. No one remembers that now on the key side of the bars. The careful psychological design forgotten, distilled into habit and convenience.)
(The pirate realizes this but withholds comment.)”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea