Sage Levy

“We know right from wrong because we learn it, one way or another, we learn it. Sometimes from our parents, who spend most of our early years teaching us how to survive, snatching our hands away from burners and electrical outlets, keeping us away from the bleach. Other times, we have to learn for ourselves, to touch our hands to the burner, to burn, before we know why there are things we can’t touch. These lessons that we learn by doing are pivotal to our development, but not everything can be learned that way.”
― Yaa gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom

“Why is it so hard to transcend the identities assigned to us when we were young?”
― Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land

“not all churches in America are created equal, not in practice and not in politics. And, for me, the damage of going to a church where people whispered disparaging words about “my kind” was itself a spiritual wound—so deep and so hidden that it has taken me years to find and address it.”
― Yaa gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom

“The premier achievement of human history, they said, the triumph of memory over the obliterating forces of destruction and erasure.”
― Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land