Status Updates From A Small Place

"As for
what we were like before we met you, I no longer care. No periods of time
over which my ancestors held sway, no documentation of complex
civilisations, is any comfort to me. Even if I really came from people who
were living like monkeys in trees, it was better to be that than what
happened to me, what I became after I met you"

"Do you know why people like me are shy about being capitalists? Well, it’s
because we, for as long as we have known you, were capital, like bales of
cotton and sacks of sugar, and you were the commanding, cruel capitalists,
and the memory of this is so strong, the experience so recent, that we can’t
quite bring ourselves to embrace this idea that you think so much"

"When the natives see you, the tourist, they envy you, they envy your
ability to leave your own banality and boredom, they envy your ability to
turn their own banality and boredom into a source of pleasure for yourself."