Tristan Eagling

“Take a Somalian toddler. She has a 20% probability of dying before reaching the age of five. Now compare: American frontline soldiers had a mortality rate of 6.7% in the Civil War, 1.8% in World War II, and 0.5% in the Vietnam War.30 Yet we won’t hesitate to send that Somalian toddler back if it turns out her mother isn’t a “real” refugee. Back to the Somalian child-mortality front.”
― Rutger Bregman, Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There – from the presenter of the 2025 BBC ‘Moral Revolution’ Reith lectures

“They say it came from Africa, carried in the screams of the enslaved; that it was the death bane of the Tainos, uttered just as one world perished and another began; that it was a demon drawn into Creation through the nightmare door that was cracked open in the Antilles. Fukú americanus, or more colloquially, fukú - generally a curse or doom of some kind; specifically the Curse and the Doom of the New World.

No matter what its name or provenance, it is believed that the arrival of Europeans on Hispaniola unleashed fukú on the world, and we've all been in the shit ever since.”
― Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

“And that’s why we should stop. Let’s stop before everything went so wrong. Let’s hold time still. Let’s remember him as he was on Enter—not crazy at all, only brilliant and brave, the most radical member of a radical Clan, whose apparent lack of control was predicated on the most complete control. Let’s remember him whip-thin, his head tilted, gold teeth showing, his eyes aggressively wide, wiry dreads moving away from his scalp like spilt lines of paint or the tentacular extrusions of his brilliant Black mind. Let’s let him win. Let’s remember those vocals, uninhibited by any rules except those he chose. Let’s focus always on the exhilaration, the feeling we had when we first heard him, the disbelief, the laughter which bubbled up like it does in children. Not the laughter of mockery, but the laughter of pure joy, the laughter of disbelief and amazement, the laughter which is all you can manage when confronted by the undeniable, surprising beauty of the world. Let’s let him breathe.”
― Will Ashon, Chamber Music: Enter the Wu-Tang

“She was the kind of girlfriend God gives you young, so you'll know loss the rest of your life.”
― Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao