Rhoda

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
― James Baldwin

“...it was becoming obvious that the war he had been anticipating, "in three to five years" might have already begun, as many wars do begin, he said, not with a major event reported in the news but with sufferings barely noticed: an unjust law, a murder, a peaceful protest march attacked by police. It begins, according to Leonel, with poverty endured by many and corruption benefiting the few, with crimes unpunished, a hardening of positions, the failure of peaceful means of appeal and redress.”
― Carolyn Forché, What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance

“People think that what happens to someone else has nothing to do with them. They think that what happens in one place doesn’t matter any place else.”
― Carolyn Forché, What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance

“The clouds above us join and separate,
The breeze in the courtyard leaves and returns.
Life is like that, so why not relax?
Who can stop us from celebrating?”
― Lu Yu