Grace McLain

“My therapist told me that when people think about power, they think about the choices that power will give them: options, resources, things like that. What they don't often think about are the consequences of power. The things you lose, the things you sacrifice, the costs[...] No one has patience for hearing about the consequences unless they're experiencing them as well; otherwise all they can see are the choices. As in, life must be sweet where you are! That's one of the more insidious ways this kind of power isolates you from other people: it's like they become blind to what's actually happening with you, replacing it with an illusion they created, their imaginations of what your life is like, which is really a fantasy of how they think their life would be if they had what you have.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir

“I know many people survive, but I also think people glorify resilience a little too much, forgetting that the fragile ones simply die as the world walks on over their bones.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir

“I am so fucking glad that I lived long enough to feel the world that I built for myself; I'm grateful for the work I did when I didn't feel like living, because it has wrapped me in this life now.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir

“It is a one-way trip, my love, you cannot undo being born, you cannot undo the body. There is no rush. It's okay for it to be slow; you only think it's slow because it's flesh. A few decades are nothing, they laugh. There's no need to destroy the body; the body is already destroying itself, the body is already dying. I take comfort in that. I am already being destroyed, I am already dying and going home, and I have work to do.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir