Completelybanned

“Hero knew that lust was one of the time-honored antidotes to sorrow, but that had never been her relationship to sex. Whatever sorrows lived in her heart were either too superficial to need such soothing, or too burrowed-in and settled to be eased out by something as mundane as coming for the fourth or fifth time against Rosalyn's fingers in the kitchen late at night when the restaurant was long closed; Rosalyn multitasking by leaving eggs and longanisa frying in an oily pan while grinding into Hero's lap, hand down her unzipped jeans, until Hero unclenched her teeth from Rosalyn's ear and said, Something's, uh, burning, and Rosalyn cursed and hopped off.”
― Elaine Castillo, America Is Not the Heart

“We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures; because the earth never froze entirely during an ice age; because a small and tenuous species, arising in Africa a quarter of a million years ago, has managed, so far, to survive by hook and by crook. We may yearn for a ‘higher answer’– but none exists”
― Stephen Jay Gould

“Yes, Marcos is gay. Marcos is gay in San Francisco, black in South Africa, an Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Ysidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, a Mayan Indian in the streets of San Cristobal, a Jew in Germany, a Gypsy in Poland, a Mohawk in Quebec, a pacifist in Bosnia, a single woman on the Metro at 10pm, a peasant without land, a gang member in the slums, an unemployed worker, an unhappy student and, of course, a Zapatista in the mountains.
Marcos is all the exploited, marginalised, oppressed minorities resisting and saying `Enough'. He is every minority who is now beginning to speak and every majority that must shut up and listen. He is every untolerated group searching for a way to speak. Everything that makes power and the good consciences of those in power uncomfortable -- this is Marcos.”
― Subcomandante Marcos

“I'm a great poet. I don't put my poems on paper: they consist of actions and feelings.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Père Goriot