el

“Such was his level of charm that it was hard to be disgusted by it: Nick expected a door to open and it did; he expected to be adored and he was. Before Nick, I had been eating at the same three restaurants and drinking at the same two bars for years because it spared me the exhaustion of walking into a new place and convincing them I belonged and they should treat me kindly, of greeting clerks and waitpersons in my PhD voice, dropping the name of the university when necessary, generously overtipping. It was revelation to move through the world with Nick, to see how little attention a white man needed to devote to that kind of performance, how much of his worry about how other people saw him could be consumed by the frivolous, how easy it was for me to be assumed respectable merely by association.”
― Danielle Evans, The Office of Historical Corrections: A Novella and Stories

“Soka Gakkai positions are not positions of prestige but of responsibility. The most important duty leaders have is to devote themselves to serving the members and fully discharging their responsibilities for kosen-rufu. Consequently, the more responsibility the position entails, the more resolute the person’s inner determination must be to put aside interests of “self” and work tirelessly for the Law, for kosen-rufu and for the members.”
― Daisaku Ikeda, The New Human Revolution - Volume 2

“Why did Justice really always wear a blindfold? I knew now. It was because the cunning bitch had dollar signs for eyeballs”
― Iceberg Slim, Pimp: The Story of My Life

“There's no continuity and the world I have come from is utterly foreign to me. I haven't heard its music, I haven't seen its painting, I haven't read its books... I know only the stony plain, wandering, and the gradual loss of hope. I am the sterile offspring of a race about which I know nothing, not even whether it has become extinct. Perhaps, somewhere, humanity is flourishing under the stars, unaware that a daughter of its blood is ending her days in silence. There is nothing we can do about it.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men