Rand Nix

“There is, among us sitting on the stage and among the people in the South End who have forgotten about this place and among even the people living here, including the few of them sitting in this room, there is not just an absence of money. There is an absence of will. Desire. Need. And without those things,” she says, sitting forward, “this place will not ever change. Accept that. Because without it, this is how life here will always be.”
― Eric Barnes, The City Where We Once Lived

“In any event, he has traded power for a clean conscience and ended up with neither.”
― M.R. Carey, The Boy on the Bridge

“Trees, thirty feet tall and black now, are planted in strict order along the avenues and main boulevards leading into and out of downtown. None of them bloom or grow anymore and some have fallen over, tumbling part way, leaning to the side, their massive roots exposed, black now too, and as I walk I touch my hand against each tree. The trunks are smooth, almost slick, as if they’ve been varnished and preserved. It’s a vision of a quiet Armageddon, or an emptied wasteland following a chemical attack. But this is only the wasteland of abuse and inattention.”
― Eric Barnes, The City Where We Once Lived

“When this place still had the pretense of being governed, then there was something against which to rebel. That’s when a few storefronts were broken, when some looting occurred, when teenagers ran wild through schools and the library, throwing books and desks against the walls. But when the city government collapsed, when everyone finally walked away from responsibility, then the destruction and rebelling all soon came to an end.”
― Eric Barnes, The City Where We Once Lived