Ivan

“It is a cruel task, to frighten people in God’s name.”
― Katherine Arden, The Bear and the Nightingale

“All my life,” she said, “I have been told ‘go’ and ‘come.’ I am told how I will live, and I am told how I must die. I must be a man’s servant and a mare for his pleasure, or I must hide myself behind walls and surrender my flesh to a cold, silent god. I would walk into the jaws of hell itself, if it were a path of my own choosing. I would rather die tomorrow in the forest than live a hundred years of the life appointed me. Please. Please let me help you.”
― Katherine Arden, The Bear and the Nightingale

“Enslaved people recognized that the slavery they were experiencing was shaped by the ability of whites to move African Americans’ bodies wherever they wanted. Forced migration created markets that allowed whites to extract profit from human beings. It brought about a kind of isolation that permitted enslavers to use torture to extract new kinds of labor.”
― Edward E. Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism

“Wild birds die in cages.”
― Katherine Arden, The Bear and the Nightingale