blake

“I suppose anything sounds righteous wher
you pay it enough respect.”
― Cebo Campbell, Sky Full of Elephants

“Charlie understood, in a way, that was just how the world now felt: blind, or all vision warped by having worn someone else's glasses.”
― Cebo Campbell, Sky Full of Elephants

“Students flirted and
smiled at each other as effortless as sunlight on a breeze. So much life and so much energy. Easy to forget that half the world died. But then again, Charlie noted, neither grief nor calamity had ever stopped the joy of black people. We smiled through the worst the world had to offer, he thought. Smiled even when our lips bled.”
― Cebo Campbell, Sky Full of Elephants

“Charlie stood up and wandered the edges of campus, watching without engaging. In this new world, he could figure neither where nor how he fit. Charlie had conflict in his heart long before the event. Before prison. All the way back to when he first learned to define himself by the language in the eyes of others, quick to articulate their bias. Ubiquitous enough for him to question the rationality of his very existence, the conflict of Charlie's darkness could only be resolved in the way any black man sees himself, that insoluble calculus. Does he see himself from within, as a divine composite of the joys, fears, hopes, and passions that make up any human being? Or does he see himself through the eyes of the world and how it reacted to him? His darkness was as elementary a question as it was existential: Who was he?”
― Cebo Campbell, Sky Full of Elephants