Jeanne

“To be accused of speaking too loudly about one injustice but not others by someone who doesn’t care about any of them is to be told, simply, to keep quiet.”
― Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

“The line between this and that, you and her, us and them, the line is thin.”
― Percival Everett, James

“Alongside the ledger of atrocity, I keep another. The Palestinian doctor who would not abandon his patients, even as the bombs closed in. The Icelandic writer who raised money to get the displaced out of Gaza. The American doctors and nurses who risked their lives to go treat the wounded in the middle of a killing field. The puppet-maker who, injured and driven from his home, kept making dolls to entertain the children. The congresswoman who stood her ground in the face of censure, of constant vitriol, of her own colleagues’ indifference. The protesters, the ones who gave up their privilege, their jobs, who risked something, to speak out. The people who filmed and photographed and documented all this, even as it happened to them, even as they buried their dead.
It is not so hard to believe, even during the worst of things, that courage is the more potent contagion. That there are more invested in solidarity than annihilation. That just as it has always been possible to look away, it is always possible to stop looking away. None of this evil was ever necessary. Some carriages are gilded and others lacquered in blood, but the same engine pulls us all. We dismantle it now, build another thing entirely, or we hurtle toward the cliff, safe in the certainty that, when the time comes, we’ll learn to lay tracks on air.”
― Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

“Master, will you change me into a man?"
"I gave you the power of speech so that we might talk intelligently together," Stephanus replied. "But if you're going to talk nonsense, I shall take it away. Man, indeed! You're not even a full-grown cat."
"But master -" said Lionel, " I don't feel like a cat."
"You are not old enough to know how you feel about anything at all," said Stephanus. "Futhermore, would you kindly tell me: Since when does a cat not feel like a cat?"
"Since you gave me human speech.”
― Lloyd Alexander, The Cat Who Wished to Be a Man