Rory Newcomb

“You take a poor, ignorant population, and give them arms, and say, ‘It’s yours. Kill.’ They’ll obey. The peasants, who were paid or forced to kill, were looking up to people of higher socio-economic standing to see how to behave.”
― Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families

“A map is a two-dimensional representation with arbitrary symbols and incised lines that decide who is to be our enemy and who is to be our friend, who deserves our love and who deserves our hatred and who, our sheer indifference.”
― Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

“I know the popcorn was stale and had the texture of moistened cardboard between my teeth.”
― Kristine S. Ervin, Rabbit Heart: A Mother's Murder, a Daughter's Story

“We never thought of ourselves as witches, my mother and I. For this was a word invented by men, a word that brings power to those who speak it, not those it describes. A word that builds gallows and pyres, turns breathing women into corpses.”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward