Ketutar Jensen

“we are all inescapably responsible, not only for our own actions, but for our lack of action, the morality and ethic of our silences and our avoidances, the shared guilt of hypocrisy, voyeurism, and cowardice; what might be called the “spectator-sport social conscience.”
― Harlan Ellison, Paingod and Other Delusions

“Now all the candles were lit, and the faces on both sides of the table were brought nearer by the candle light, and composed, as they had not been in the twilight, into a party round a table”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

“I knew as a 10-year-old Black girl that I was not precious to these adults. I believed they would kill me as readily as they would kill the Viet Cong the US was at war with. It didn't matter that I was a United States citizen. It didn't matter that I was very smart, would probably grow up to be pretty like my mother, or that I was fun to talk to and had unlimited potential. It didn't matter that I was a good girl and hadn't been suspended from school. It didn't matter because I didn't matter to them.”
― Mae Jemison, Find Where the Wind Goes: Moments From My Life

“Lewis! Stop throwing stones! I don't believe you've listened to a single word I've been saying!"
"Yes, I have. You were talking about jugs. I'm listening. I'm listening to you and a dozen other things as well."
"There aren't a dozen other things. There's only the chapel bell, and some men shouting in the boats down on the quay... and a dog barking, and some ducks in the garden below."
"Not bad! You've missed about fifty larks in the sky, and the grasshoppers all round us, and a car changing gear on the hill, and the oars in the rowlocks of that boat putting out, and the children playing, and the goat bells away on the hill behind us, and I think I can hear a smity."
"What a babel it sounds! I'd have said it was a quiet evening."
"So it is. It's so quiet that you can hear every sound in it.”
― Margaret Kennedy, The Constant Nymph