Alec Downie

“On the wall at Elizabeth's office they had a map of the United States and the Caribbean with pins and red marker to indicate the cities and towns and routes that Black Star promoted. Stay on the path and you'll be safe, eat in peace, sleep in peace, breath in peace and beware. Work together and you can subvert their evil order. It was a map if the black nation inside the white world, part of the bigger thing but its own self, independent, with its own constitution. If we did not help one another we'd be lost out there.”
― Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle

“I've done everything from helping old people to pee to taking out their garbage to chasing their escaped pets. We are the poor man's ambulance, and we are also, sad to say, the poor man's priest, our cab the confessional in which people litmus-test their wildest fears and prejudices.”
― Lee Durkee, The Last Taxi Driver

“If Adolf Hitler flew in today, they'd send a limousine anyway.”
― Joe Strummer, The Clash Anthology

“about as helpful as make-up to a leper”
― Alain Mabanckou, Letter to Jimmy