Amanda Wells

“I’m tired of the news. I’m tired of the way it makes things spectacular that aren’t, and deals so simplistically with what’s truly appalling. I’m tired of the vitriol. I’m tired of the anger. I’m tired of the meanness. I’m tired of the selfishness. I’m tired of how we’re doing nothing to stop it. I’m tired of how we’re encouraging it. I’m tired of the violence there is and I’m tired of the violence that’s on its way, that’s coming, that hasn’t happened yet. I’m tired of liars. I’m tired of sanctified liars. I’m tired of how those liars have let this happen.”
― Ali Smith, Autumn

“Sometimes, you recognize truth because it destroys you for a bit.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Freshwater

“When the state is not kind, then the people are fodder.”
― Ali Smith, Autumn

“I thought of my existence before Titch's arrival, the brutal hours in the field under the crushing sun, the screams, the casual finality edging every slave's life, as though each day could very easily be the last. And that, it seemed to me clearly, was the more obvious anguish- that life had never belonged to any of us, even when we'd sought to reclaim it by ending it. We had been estranged from the potential of our own bodies, from the revelation of everything our minds and bodies could accomplish.”
― Esi Edugyan, Washington Black