Julia O.

“It was some time before he could put Alfred, Georgia, Sixo, Schoolteacher, Halle, his brothers, Sethe, Mister, the taste of iron, the sight of butter, the smell of hickory, notebook paper, one by one, into the tobacco tin lodged in his chest. By the time he got to 124 nothing in this world could pry it open.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“See?” Momose said with a grin on his face. “That’s your problem. Is it because you don’t want to, or because you can’t? What’s stopping you from coming at us with a kitchen knife? If you tried, things would change, but you still can’t do it. Why? Are you afraid of getting caught? You could do it now and it wouldn’t even be a crime.”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s a crime.” My voice made my entire body shake. “I just don’t want to.”

“Because you’d feel guilty? Okay, but if we don’t feel guilt, what makes you feel it? Which one of us is right?” Momose laughed. “Guess what? They’re exactly the same.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“All that matters is that you can’t do it. You can’t. That’s why you’ve never said you’d kill us or whatever, even after we made you into a soccer ball. You’ve never done anything, because you can’t. Some people in this world can do things, others can’t. At cram school, there’s this rich kid, and some of the other kids make him bring money from home every day. Some people get a kick out of making people jerk off in front of them. We’re not like that. I’m not saying one’s better than the other. It’s just that some people can do things, and others can’t. There are things that they want to do and things that they don’t. Everyone has their own likes and dislikes. It couldn’t be any simpler. People do what they can get away with.”
― Mieko Kawakami

“Wash your leg well-well. Greet your sister, greet your people,” the woman says, tightening her wrapper around her waist.

"Greet your people also. Greet your baby and Halima,” Chika says. Later, as she walks home, she will pick up a stone stained the copper of dried blood and hold the ghoulish souvenir to her chest. And she will suspect right then, in a strange flash while clutching the stone, that she will never find Nnedi, that her sister is gone. But now, she turns to the woman and adds, “May I keep your scarf? The bleeding might start again.”

The woman looks for a moment as if she does not understand; then she nods. There is perhaps the beginning of future grief on her face, but she smiles a slight, distracted smile before she hands the scarf back to Chika and turns to climb out of the window.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie