Maria

“Her voice carried the voices of a hundred thousand souls in it; a whole history of resistance and rage moved with her.”
― Daniel José Older, Shadowshaper

“In the expectant quiet, there were only the usual sounds of the night. Wind in the big trees out past the school wall, starting to rise as the sky darkened, Crickets beginning to chirp. Then Sabriel heard it--the massed grinding of Dead joints, no longer joined by gristle; the padding of Dead feet, bones like hobnails clicking through necrotic flesh.”
― Garth Nix, Sabriel

“That’s what an empire is,” he said, “an orchestrator of gravity, a sun around which all weaker things spin.”
― Omar El Akkad, American War

“Nelson Mandela once said, 'If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.' He was so right. When you make the effort to speak someone else's language, even if it's just basic phrases here and there, you are saying to them, 'I understand that you have a culture and identity that exists beyond me. I see you as a human being”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood