Ava James

“That was the problem with love. It created blind spots in your mind. Bloodred flags were blocked out by high levels of dopamine and the trick of a gentlemanly smile.”
― Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé, Where Sleeping Girls Lie

“Woman does not emerge from a man’s rib, not ever, it’s he who emerges from her womb.”
― Nizar Qabbani

“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
― Mark Twain

“The more routine his days, the more unruly his nights. He woke after midnight, when the dormitory was dead, starting at imagined sounds—footsteps at the threshold, leather slapping the ceiling. He squinted at the darkness—nothing. Then he was up for hours, in a spell, agitated by rickety thoughts and weakened by an ebbing of the spirit. It wasn’t Spencer that undid him, or a supervisor or a new antagonist slumbering in room 2, rather it was that he’d stopped fighting. In keeping his head down, in his careful navigation so that he made it to lights-out without mishap, he fooled himself that he had prevailed. That he had outwitted Nickel because he got along and kept out of trouble. In fact he had been ruined. He was like one of those Negroes Dr. King spoke of in his letter from jail, so complacent and sleepy after years of oppression that they had adjusted to it and learned to sleep in it as their only bed.”
― Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys