Antigone Progone

“These were sad people, and for the world I wanted to think of them as decent. Perhaps they were decent enough, but the place made them so offensive to me that all who lived there became there.”
― Percival Everett, I Am Not Sidney Poitier

“Your father played chess," Hertz Shemets once said, "like a man with a toothache, a hemorrhoid, and gas." He sighed, he moaned. He tugged in fits at the patchy remnant of his brown hair, or chased it with his fingers back and forth across his pate like a pastry chef scattering flour on a marble slab. The blunders of his opponents were each a separate cramp in the abdomen. His own moves, however daring, however startling and original and strong, struck him like successive pieces of terrible news, so that he covered his mouth and rolled his eyes at the sight of them.”
― Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen's Union

“It should have been distressing. In truth, though, Robin found it was actually quite easy to put up with any degree of social unrest, as long as one got used to looking away.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“What you don’t understand,’ said Ramy, ‘is how much people like you will excuse if it just means they can get tea and coffee on their breakfast tables. They don’t care, Letty. They just don’t care.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel