Pradipa P. Rasidi

“They had him. They just stood and watched him, each with the faint suggestion of that intolerable slow smile upon his face. They raised their eyes, un-speaking, looked at us as we rolled past, with the obscene communication of their glance and of their smile.

And he—he too paused once from his voluble and feverish discourse as we passed him. He lifted his eyes to us, his pasty face, and he was silent for a moment. And we looked at him for the last time, and he at us-this time, more direct and steadfastly.
And in that glance there was all the silence of man's mortal anguish. And we were all somehow naked and ashamed, and somehow guilty. We all felt somehow that we were saying fare-well, not to a man but to humanity; not to some nameless little cipher out of life, but to the fading image of a brother's face.
We lost him then. The train swept out and gathered speed-and so farewell.”
― Thomas Wolfe, I Have a Thing to Tell You

“United States represents the hegemonic "culture of terrorism," providing the central model and leading example emulated by every other nation involved in state terror around the world ... The structures, tactics, and technology of state terror have been diffused, in fact aggressively marketed and exported as a form of "military aid" to developing countries. A focus on state terror at the level of individual countries tends to obscure the fact that it is a global phenomenon supported by an international structure or network, and local cases are only comprehensible within this encapsulating context.”
― Jeffrey A. Sluka, Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror

“He clicked his heels together and bowed formally; and then closed the door. And I stood there for a moment, with that nameless feeling of affection and regret, knowing that I should never see him again.”
― Thomas Wolfe, I Have a Thing to Tell You

“Ere morning the storm had passed; and day broke through a cloudless east. Even if the sleeve of Aoyagi hid from her lover's eyes the rose-blush of that dawn, he could no longer tarry.”
― Lafcadio Hearn, Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things