Belle

“Look at outside. We don't have drug dealers on the corners anymore. I can't remember the last time someone was shot on this block. My church-goers can come and go in peace."

"When there isn't a curfew. Pastor, this isn't peace. This is order”
― Tochi Onyebuchi, Riot Baby

“My Grandpa Miller explained that during migration, birds flew in V formation. The bird at the front, the tip of the V, had the hardest job facing the greatest amount of wind resistance. The air coming off the leader’s flapping wings lifted the birds flying behind it. Being the leader was grueling, so the birds took turns. When a bird exhausted itself, it trailed to the back, where it wouldn’t have to flap as hard, riding waves of wind that have been broken down by others. It saved its energy so that it could lead again. This was the only way to make the journey, to escape winter and make it to warmer places. I had spent two weeks pumping my wings, keeping a calm face, to protect my flock from brutal conditions. But resilience required rest. For the next eight months I was going to fall back. The most important thing to remember was that to be at the rear, to be slower, did not mean you were not a leader.”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name: A Memoir

“That's the power of literature, you know, it can act like little love letters between two people who can only explain their feelings by pointing at other people's.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“I personally subscribe to Dr. King’s definition of an unjust law as being ‘out of harmony with the moral law.’ And the higher moral law here is that people have a human right to move, to change location, if they experience hunger, poverty, violence, or lack of opportunity, especially if that climate in their home countries is created by the United States, as is the case with most third world countries from which people migrate. Ain’t that ’bout a bitch.”
― Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, The Undocumented Americans