Lacey

“If I've thought of my mother as callous, and many times I have, then it is important to remember what a callus is: the hardened tissue that forms over a wound.”
― Yaa Gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom

“My father who got cages instead of compassion.

My father whose whole story no one of us will ever know.

What did it do to him, all those years locked away, all that time in chains, all those days upon days without human touch except touch meant to harm - hand behind your back, N****r. Get on the fucking wall, N****r! Lift your sac, N****r. Don't look at me like that or I will f*****g kill your Black ass.

It would be easy to speculate about the impact of years of cocaine use on my father's heart, but I suspect that it will tell us less than if we could measure the cumulative effects of hatred, racism and indignity. What is the impact of years of strip searches, of being bent over, the years before that when you were a child and knew that no dream you had for yourself was taken seriously by anyone, that you were not someone who would be fully invested in by a nation that treated you as expendable?”
― Patrisse Khan-Cullors, When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir

“Sheriff, I’m wanted everywhere—but not by the law.”
― Beverly Jenkins, A Chance at Love

“It’s the duty of every man and woman who has achieved some success in life to pass it on, because when we’re gone, what matters most isn’t what we were able to attain but who we were able to help.”
― Mateo Askaripour, Black Buck