Ebrahim Elmoly

“Typical white man behavior, Ms. Mori said. Have you ever noticed how a white man can learn a few words of some Asian language and we just eat it up? He could ask for a glass of water and we’d treat him like Einstein. Sonny smiled and wrote that down, too. You’ve been here longer than we have, Ms. Mori, he said with some admiration. Have you noticed that when we Asians speak English, it better be nearly perfect or someone’s going to make fun of our accent? It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been here, Ms. Mori said. White people will always think we’re foreigners. But isn’t there another side to that? I said, my words a little slurred from the cognac in my bloodstream. If we speak perfect English, then Americans trust us. It makes it easier for them to think we’re one of them.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

“There is an ocean of silence between us… and I am drowning in it.”
― Ranata Suzuki

“ثمةَ فرق بين السبب الذي يجعل الناس تعتقد في شيِ ما , وبين السبب الذي يجعل هذا الشيء حقًا أو صوابًا.”
― عادل مصطفى, المغالطات المنطقية

“I know that I stopped thinking about extreme grief as the sole vehicle for great art when the grief started to take people with it. And I get it. The tortured artist is the artist that gets remembered for all time, particularly if they if they either perish or overcome. But the truth is that so many of us are stuck in the middle. So many of us begin tortured and end tortured, with only brief bursts of light in between, and I'd rather have average art and survival than miracles that come at the cost of someone's life.”
― Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us: Essays