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

“Pride is an evil dragon; it sleeps underneath your heart and then roars when you need silence.”
― Jodi Picoult, Small Great Things

“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

“Strange how, when you are young, you owe no duty to the future; but when you are old, you owe a duty to the past. To the one thing you can’t change.”
― Julian Barnes, The Only Story