mwana > Books: contemporary‎ (175)

His blue eyes were so sad, almost mournful and filled with power.

A few seconds later the door swung open and a short, trim man in his late twenties regarded me with solemn blue eyes. His dark blond hair was cut short.... his face had a slightly absent-minded expression, as if he was thinking about something completely abstract when you interrupted.

Cornelius regarded me. He had smart eyes, calm and sardonic...

Grandma leaned into the track bar. The track split open and crasged to the floor with a loud clang. She stared at me with big blue eyes.

He was staring at me like he knew who I was... I looked into his blue eyes.

I looked into his blue eyes.

Mad Rogan stared at me with his blue eyes.

I tried to rattle my cuffs to underscore the point, but tey remained completely immovable. Mad Rogan fixed me with his blue eyes.

If you’re Black and you’re a translator then people look at you funny. They get this fold right over their nose. You can’t see it unless you’re looking for it. But if you’re looking for it, you can’t unsee it.

With every single person we touch, we’re leaving parts of ourselves.

Before that, like most young people, they had all thought they would live forever.

It’s up to each of us to choose wisely when life gets really hard. We agree right now to assemble when one of us calls, no questions asked. We say nice things about you and remind you that you are loved. That’s it. Everyone goes once, and once everyone has gone, the pact is done. There’s no more obligation.

It was also comforting knowing there were far worse delinquents than him.

Everyone was on the same ticking clock. They might fool themselves into thinking that more time affords them opportunities to do more things, that the future is open-ended. But the world is simply too big. We weren’t meant to see everything, we weren’t built to do everything, we aren’t capable of knowing everything. At a certain point, peace has to be found with the choices we’ve made.

Brooke was an inveterate People magazine reader. She also claimed to be Army, whatever the hell that was, and seemed to communicate with her comrades almost solely through hashtags and gifs. Which was just one reason why Zach was secretly dubious about Pop's plans for her to become a human-resources manager. He wasn't convinced she was entirely human. Surely somewhere in outer space an alien civilization was scouring the volcanic plans for one of their Army?

...I couldn't remember which of the dark cabins was supposed to be mine. They all looked alike when they were asleep. Which started me laughing so hard, I had to grab the nearest tree to stay upright.
"Can I have this dance?" ...
A hand landed on my shoulder, "May I cut in?"

"My name is Rory Torr," he said crisply, "Special Agent Rory Torr to you."
After a moment, I asked suspiciously, "Why just to me?"

"...And why would I, the wisest of queens, not speak that savage North tongue --especially when I constantly have to deal with savages? A child could learn it in a day... Why does my court not ooh and ahh?"

You could have a family of one and still drive them apart.

...Perhaps you hate none, not even your mother. But tell me I lie when I say you always expected the worst of Sogolon. And every other woman you have met.

"My ears going tired from the sound of witches."
*
A night fat with heat.
*
"You blaspheming the gods?"
"Blaspheming means you believe."
"You don't believe in gods?"
"I don't believe in belief..."

Until the slaves see they would rather the bondage they know than the freedom they do not.

Fuck all lords. All these kings come from the womb of woman. What is to stop this man-child from doing just as all other man has done? Kill all men.

"It's what they call professional deformation—a condition for which, sadly, there is no cure."

The three men were almost certainly immigrants, possibly Turkish and Surinamese. Meanwhile, their labor was necessitated by the heritage aesthetic of the city, not to mention the carelessness of a wealthy population that dropped its cigarette butts onto the pavement without a thought, when the designated receptacle was only a few feet away, I now saw that there were dozens of cigarette butts on the ground directly below the ashtrays. It was only an anecdote. But it was one example of how the city’s veneer of civility was constantly giving way, in places it was barely there at all.

the prospect offered by a new relationship, the opportunity to be someone other than yourself.

She hates that she suddenly has "friends" she neither knows nor trusts, and even that the racists are just ordinary hateful people instead of fitting into Staten's unique brand of pro-Wu Tang anti Blackness.

Mind your business. Just stop trying to control other worlds, stop even looking at them. You're the problem. Just let go.

"Could this person have been Kingston?"
Ellery did a double take. "Could it have been Kingston?
Nora nodded excitedly, "Is it possible?"
"No, it's not possible...That guy was three times the size of Kingston."
Nora looked disappointed, "That's a shame."

You don’t hear me, do you. Every conversation we’ve ever had, you don’t listen. Not really. You look at me. Your mouth stops moving. But the entire time, you’re just waiting until it’s your turn to talk again.

Guncle Rule number one. Okay? If we must? Cameras are your enemy as much as they’re your friend. Scratch that. That’s Guncle Rule number two. Guncle Rule number one: Brunch is splendid.

Pain doesn't lift until you feel it.

Guncle Rule sweet sixteen: I want you to really live. To live is the rarest of things. Most people merely exist.

If I could talk about it, I would not have to do it. I make art, sometimes I make true art, and sometimes it fills the empty places in my life.

Books were safer than other people anyway.... I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.

The plaques that explained who they were also told me that the majority of them had murdered their families and sold their bodies to anatomy. It was then that the word anatomy gathered its worn edge of horror for me. I did not know what anatomy was. I knew only that anatomy made people kill their children.

My book of Greek myths had told me that the narcissi were named after a beautiful young man, so lovely that he had fallen in love with himself... In my mind when I read this, I knew that a narcissus must be the most beautiful flower in the world. I was disappointed when I learned that it was just a less impressive daffodil.

Adult stories never made sense, and they were so slow to start. They made me feel like there were secrets, masonic mythic secrets to adulthood.

Adults follow paths. Children explore.

Growing up, I took so many cues from books. They taught me most of what I knew about what people did, about how to behave.

...when adults fight children, adults always win