Tashna Downes

“I don’t know why more love stories aren’t written about platonic intimacy.”
― Alexia Arthurs, How to Love a Jamaican

“There is a way to be cruel that seems Jamaican to me. But I’ve heard other islanders say the same thing, so maybe it’s a Caribbean thing. Though Africans and African Americans tell me that it’s a similar way with them, so maybe it’s a black thing. It’s saying exactly what you think, regardless of how it will affect the listener. Perhaps this is the language of the oppressed—the colonized, the enslaved. Maybe our kind doesn’t have time for soft words. My friend, from Jamaica same as me, says that she prefers this to people talking behind her back. I don’t know that I agree.”
― Alexia Arthurs, How to Love a Jamaican

“This strange new test called PISA, which stood for the Program for International Student Assessment. Instead of a typical test question, which might ask which combination of coins you needed to buy something, PISA asked you to design your own coins, right there in the test booklet.”
― Amanda Ripley, The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way

“An earthquake achieves what the law promises but does not in practice maintain," one of the survivors wrote. "The equality of all men".”
― Sebastian Junger, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging