Keith Alston

“We all broken, I said. Some broken folk do whatever they can not to break other folk. If we're gone be broken, I wonder if we can be those kind of broken folk from now on. I think it's possible to be broken and ask for help without breaking other people.”
― Kiese Laymon, Heavy

“I would learn fifteen years too late that asking for consent, granting consent, surviving sexual violence, being called a good dude, and never initiating sexual relationships did not incubate me from being emotionally abusive. Consent meant little to nothing if it was not fully informed. What, and to whom, were my partners consenting if I spent our entire relationship convincing them that a circle was not a circle but just a really relaxed square? I’d become good at losing weight and great at convincing women they didn’t see or know what they absolutely saw and knew. Lying there on that floor, I accepted that I’d actually never been honest with myself about what carrying decades of lies did to other people’s hearts and heads.”
― Kiese Laymon, Heavy

“I will not misdirect or manipulate human beings...especially those human beings who love me enough to risk being misdirected or manipulated. I will not misdirect or manipulate myself...I will not say I am sorry when I am resentful. I will not give my blessings away. I will love myself enough to be honest when I fail at loving.”
― Kiese Laymon, Heavy

“We in this room have no private properties. Perhaps one or two of us may own the homes we live in, or have a dollar or two set aside - but we own nothing that does not contribute directly toward keeping us alive. All that we own is our bodies. And we sell our bodies every day we live. We sell them when we go out in the morning to our jobs and when we labor all day. We are forced to sell at any price, at any time, for any purpose. We are forced to sell our bodies so that we can eat and live. And the price which is given us for this is only enough so that we will have the strength to labor longer for the profits of others. Today we are not put up on platforms and sold at the courthouse square. But we are forced to sell our strength, our time, our souls during almost every hour that we live. We have been freed from one kind of slavery only to be delivered into another. Is this freedom? Are we yet free men?”
― Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter