Rachel B

“We remained travelers, enclosed in the self, capable, possibly, of transforming ourselves in contact with alterity, but certainly not of experiencing it profoundly. We are spies, we make the rapid, furtive contact of spies. When”
― Mathias Énard, Compass

“because white men can’t police their imagination black people are dying”
― Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric

“There are two categories of friendship: those in which people enliven one another and those in which people must be enlivened to be with one another. In the first category one clears the decks to be together; in the second one looks for an empty space in the schedule.”
― Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City

“He himself is almost a myth, and his story a legend. To tell about him, one should be French, because only the people of that nation manage to explain to others what they don’t understand themselves.”
― Nikolai Leskov, The Enchanted Wanderer: and Other Stories