compassion_for_all

“If you have a cunt – excuse my language […] – if you are born with this hole, instead of it being a source of pride, you are doomed to either marrying someone or else being a whore. You eat or you are eaten.”
― Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Petals of Blood

“Aaaaah. I am old. I have no more dreams. And what are my wishes? There is only one. To join my man in the other world.”
― Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Petals of Blood

“We are all prostitutes, for in a world of grab and take, in a world built on a structure of inequality and injustice, in a world where some can eat while others can only toil, some can send their children to schools and others cannot, in a world where a prince, a monarch, a businessman can sit on billions while people starve or hit their heads against church walls for divine deliverance from hunger, yes, in a world where a man who has never set foot on this land can sit in a New York or London office and determine what I shall eat, read, think, do, only because he sits on a heap of billions taken from the world’s poor, in such a world, we are all prostituted. For as long as there’s a man in prison, I am also in prison: for as long as there is a man who goes hungry and without clothes, I am also hungry and without clothes.”
― Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Petals of Blood

“A worker has no particular home … He belongs everywhere and nowhere. I get a job here, I do it … I carry my only property – my labour power, my hands – everywhere with me. Willing buyer … a seller who must sell … It is the life under this system.’
‘Yes … it’s life,’ echoed Munira, without realizing the full import of the words.”
― Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Petals of Blood