Raymond

“The act of writing is a way to create another world in language, a dwelling place for the psyche wherein the chaos of the external world is transformed, shaped into a made thing, and ordered. It is an act of reclamation. And resistance: the soul sings for justice and the song is poetry.”
― Natasha Trethewey, The House of Being

“I know now that if we choose to keep any part of what is behind us, we must take all of it, hold each moment up to the light like a photograph.”
― Natasha Trethewey, Bellocq's Ophelia

“History, as nearly no one seems to know, is not merely something to be read. And it does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do. —JAMES BALDWIN”
― Jon Meacham, The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels

“To have dominion over oneself, to be the sovereign of the nation of the self, one must be the writer of the story.”
― Natasha Trethewey, The House of Being