Michael Bruebach

“One is absolutely forced to make perpetual qualifications and one's own reactions are always canceling each other out. It is this, really, which has driven so many people mad, both white and black. One is always in the position of having to decide between amputation and gangrene. Amputation is swift but time may prove that amputation was not necessary--or one may delay the amputation too long. Gangrene is slow, but it is I,possible to be sure that one is reading one's symptoms right. The idea of going through life as a cripple is more than one can bear, and equally unbearable is the risk if swelling up slowly, in agony, with poison.”
― James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son