Rebecca Evans

“There is an illusion about America, a myth about America to which we are clinging which has nothing to do with the lives we lead and I don't believe that anybody in this country who has really thought about it or really almost anybody who has been brought up against it--and almost all of us have one way or another--this collision between one's image of oneself and what one actually is is always very painful and there are two things you can do about it, you can meet the collision head-on and try and become what you really are or you can retreat and try to remain what you thought you were, which is a fantasy, in which you will certainly perish.”
― James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name

“Allegiance, after all, has to work two ways; and one can grow weary of an allegiance which is not reciprocal.”
― James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name

“A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty. But one no longer has the right to say so aloud.”
― Philippe Ariès, Western Attitudes Toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present

“No one is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart: for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.”
― James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name