Felipe Arroyo

“People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at all— a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named— but elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world are not…..

I had decided to allow no room in the universe for something which shamed and frightened me. I succeeded very well— by not looking at the universe, by not looking at myself, by remaining, in effect, in constant motion.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“I had decided to allow no room in the universe for something which shamed and frightened me.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“Now I think it’s one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child—What do you want to be when you grow up? As if growing up is finite. As if at some point you become something and that’s the end.”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“Until I die there will be those moments, moments seeming to rise up out of the ground like Macbeth's witches, when his face will come before me, that face in all its changes, when the exact timbre of his voice and tricks of his speech will nearly burst my ears, when his smell will overpower my nostrils. Sometimes, in the days which are coming--God grant me the grace to live them-- in the glare of the grey morning, sour-mouthed, eyelids raw and red, hair tangled and damp from stormy sleep, facing, over coffee and cigarette smoke, last night's impenetrable, meaningless boy who will shortly rise and vanish like the smoke, I will see Giovanni again, as he was that night, so vivid, so winning, all of the light of that gloomy tunnel trapped around his head.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room