Hammad Ahmed

“I'm so fucking tired of black women always being described by their skin tones! Honey-colored this! Dark-chocolate that! My paternal grandmother was mocha-tinged, café-au-lait, graham-fucking-cracker brown! How come they never describe the white characters in relation to foodstuffs and hot liquids? Why aren't there any yogurt-colored, egg-shell-toned, string-cheese-skinned, low-fat-milk white protagonists in these racist, no-third-act-having books? That's why black literature sucks!”
― Paul Beatty, The Sellout

“I may not know quite what you are,
but I know what you are not…
You are not the kind who leaves my mind
and is easily forgot.”
― Ranata Suzuki

“Love was by its very nature disruptive, cataclysmic; and if it was not, then it was not love.”
― Julian Barnes, The Only Story

“You realize how sympathy and antagonism can coexist. You are discovering how many seemingly incompatible emotions can thrive, side by side, in the same human heart.”
― Julian Barnes, The Only Story