Ayi Kwei Armah · 191 pages
Rating: (2K votes)
“Alone, i am nothing. i have nothing.we have power.but we will never know it,we will never see it work.unless we come together to make it work.”
“Disgust with injustice may sharpen the desire for justice. Readers who don’t see this connection merely wish to be entertained, and I have neither skill nor desire to turn the agony of a people into entertainment.”
“The sand looked so beautiful then, so many little individual grains in the light of the night, giving the watcher the childhood feeling of infinite things finally understood, the humiliating feeling of the watcher's nothingness.”
“True, I used to see a lot of hope. I saw men tear down the veils behind which the truth had been hidden. But then the same men, when they have power in their hands at last, began to find the veils useful. They made many more. Life has not changed. Only some people have been growing, becoming different, that is all. After a youth spent fighting the white man, why should not the president discover as he grows older that his real desire has been to be like the white governor himself, to live above all the blackness in the big old slave castle?”
“Outrage alternated with a sweaty fear he had never before felt. Something, it seemed to him was being drained from him, leaving the body feeling like a very dry sponge, very light, completely at the mercy of sly toying gusts of wind.”
“But no matter what choices we make - solo or together - our finish line remains the same … No matter how we choose to live, we both die at the end.”
“It follows that there are two ways for the nature and use of human power to change. One is that an order might issue from the palace, a command unto the people saying “It is thus.” But the other, the more certain, the more inevitable, is that those thousand thousand points of light should each send a new message. When the people change, the palace cannot hold.”
“My brain is such a traitorous beast.”
“Винаги ми се е виждало странно… — поде Док. — Качествата, които ценим у човека — доброта и щедрост, откритост, честност, разбиране и чувство, — всички те съпътствуват неудачите в нашата система. А ония черти, които презираме — нетърпимостта, алчността лакомията, низостта, егоизма, — те са пътят към успеха. И макар хората да се възхищават от стойността на първите, те всъщност обичат плодовете на последните.
— Че кой ще ти иска да бъде добър, ако за това трябва да гладува! — подхвърли Ричард Фрост.
— Но тук не става дума за глад! То е нещо съвършено различно. Да продаваш човешките души, за да спечелиш света, е нещо от край до край доброволно и едва ли не повсеместно… но не съвсем. Такива като Мак и момчетата има навсякъде по света.”
“Do you not hear the constant victory,
in the human footrace
of time, slow as fire,
sure, and thick and Herculean
accumulating its volume and adding its sad fiber?”
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