Status Updates From The Nickel Boys

For others to claim him as kin, those who saw the same future approaching, slow as it may be and overfond of back roads and secret hardscrabble paths, attuned to the deeper music in the speeches and hand-painted signs of protest. Those ready to commit their weight to the great lever and move the world. They never appeared.

but they had been denied even the simple pleasure of being ordinary. Hobbled and handicapped before the race even began, never figuring out how to be normal.

He stopped watching the movie a few years later when he realized he didn’t watch it because it was sort of corny, or they got the facts wrong, or it marked how far he had come, but because watching it made him sad, and a nutjob part of him sought out that sadness. At a certain point he learned the smarter play was to avoid the things that brought you low.

You can change the law but you can’t change people and how they treat each other.

Violence is the only lever big enough to move the world.