Maggie Valenti

“The Door of No Return - real and metaphoric as some places are, mythic to those of us who are scattered in the Americas today. To have one’s belonging lodged in a metaphor is voluptuous intrigue; to inhabit a trope; to be a kind of fiction. To live in the Black Diaspora I think is to live in a fiction - a creation of empires, and also self-creation. It is to be being living inside and outside herself. It is to apprehend the the sign one makes yet to be unable to escape it except in radiant moments of ordinariness made like art. To be a fiction in search of its most resonant metaphor then is even more intriguing.”
― Dionne Brand, A Map to the Door of No Return

“Even when this world is a forgotten whisper of dust between the stars, I will always love you.”
― Sarah J. Maas, Empire of Storms

“I am not nostalgic. Belonging does not interest me. I had once thought that it did. Until I examined the underpinnings. One is mislead when one looks at the sails and majesty of tall ships instead of their cargo.”
― Dionne Brand, A Map to the Door of No Return

“It is not such a hard thing, is it - to die for your friends.”
― Sarah J. Maas, Empire of Storms