Darcy Woodring

“You must resist the common urge toward the comforting narrative of divine law, toward fairy tales that imply some irrepressible justice. The enslaved were not bricks in your road, and their lives were not chapters in your redemptive history. They were people turned to fuel for the American machine. Enslavement was not destined to end, and it is wrong to claim our present circumstance—no matter how improved—as the redemption for the lives of people who never asked for the posthumous, untouchable glory of dying for their children. Our triumphs can never compensate for this.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

“I didn’t always have things, but I had people—I always had people.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

“love could be soft and understanding; that, soft or hard, love was an act of heroism. And I could no longer predict where I would find my heroes.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

“As always, the interpretation has more to do with the one interpreting than the one being interpreted”
― Ayad Akhtar, Homeland Elegies