Dovide

“He had never experienced anything like this before outside the Zone. And it had happened in the
Zone only two or three times. It was as though he were in a different world. A million odors cascaded in
on him at once—sharp, sweet, metallic, gentle, dangerous ones, as crude as cobblestones, as delicate
and complex as watch mechanisms, as huge as a house and as tiny as a dust particle. The air became
hard, it developed edges, surfaces, and corners, like space was filled with huge, stiff balloons, slippery
pyramids, gigantic prickly crystals, and he had to push his way through it all, making his way in a dream
through a junk store stuffed with ancient ugly furniture … It lasted a second. He opened his eyes, and
everything was gone. It hadn't been a different world—it was this world turning a new, unknown side to
him. This side was revealed to him for a second and then disappeared, before he had time to figure it out.”
― Arkady Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic

“That anybody white could take your whole self for anything that came to mind. Not just work, kill, or maim you, but dirty you. Dirty you so bad you couldn’t like yourself anymore. Dirty you so bad you forgot who you were and couldn’t think it up. And though she and others lived through and got over it, she could never let it happen to her own. The best thing she was, was her children. Whites might dirty her all right, but not her best thing, her beautiful, magical best thing—the part of her that was clean. No undreamable dreams about whether the headless, feetless torso hanging in the tree with a sign on it was her husband or Paul A; whether the bubbling-hot girls in the colored-school fire set by patriots included her daughter; whether a gang of whites invaded her daughter’s private parts, soiled her daughter’s thighs and threw her daughter out of the wagon. She might have to work the slaughterhouse yard, but not her daughter.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“She did not know it then, but the word "baby," said softly and with such kindness, that inaugurated her life in the world as a woman.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“Apocalypse?"
"Yes, apocalypse! What a silly word. I can tell you there's no word like it in Ojibwe. Well, I never heard a word like that from my elders anyway."
Evan nodded, giving the elder his full attention.
"The world was ending," she went on. "Our world isn't ending. It already ended. It ended when the Zhaagnaash came into our original home down south on that bay and took it from us. That was our world. When the Zhaagnaash cut down all the trees and fished all the fish and forced us out of there, that's when our world ended. They made us come all the way up here. This is not our homeland! But we hade to adapt and luckily we already knew how to hunt and live on the land. We learned to live here!"
She became more animated as she went on. Her small hands swayed as she emphasized the words she wanted to highlight. "But then they followed us up here and started taking our children away from us! Thats when our world ended again. And that wasn't the last time. We've seen what this....what's the world again?"
"Apocalypse."
"Yes, Apocalypse. We've had that over and over. But we always survived. Were still here. And well still be here, even if the power and the radios don't come back on and we never see any white people ever again.”
― Waubgeshig Rice, Moon of the Crusted Snow