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But the mind is its own place, as Milton said, it can make a Hell of Heaven and a Heaven of Hell. How does it do that? By remembering, or forgetting. The only tricks a mind can play.
Mind
I’ve always wanted to tell my story, even though one person’s story is only a raindrop in an ocean.
My story
‘However long it is will be too long in the end.’
How long
Children are all blindfolds and hammers. Cruel because of what they don’t know.
Children
Not one thing in this world more dangerous than a white woman when she bored. You hear?’
The Bored White Woman
Reading was the best thing and the worst thing that ever happened to me.
Reading
All those good-doers, sniffing at the carcass of slavery, craving always to hear the worst thing. The worst thing isn’t that it strips the world to scraps and forces you to fight for them; the worst thing is that one of those scraps is yourself.
Scraps
All the small joys of my small life coming to an end. Time has its way with all of us, whether we like it or not.
Small joys
‘They are monsters, because this place makes monsters.’
Monsters
Jamaica was a sum: men, cane, guineas. One part missing meant the rest would no longer add up, and a man would no longer be a man.
A sum
Not only pretty but interesting! And that in an age when so many women seem capable of being only one or the other.
Madame
When Wollstonecraft said that a woman will be crucified for aiming at respect instead of love, she must have meant at the hands of the very man who is supposed to love her .
R.E.S.P.E.C.T.
the point of reading is not to feel more a part of the world, but less. To take oneself out of it. On paper, everything can be hammered into shape, though the world is shapeless.’
Madame talks about reading
‘I think it is true that the best art is driven by fear.
Fear
I’d never seen the use of beauty myself. Nothing but a lucky arrangement of meat and bone.
What's the use of beauty ?
‘You can always tell, straight away, with drunks. It’s the smile. They have cruel smiles.’
Drunks
One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love.
One word
Women focus on what they lack, men on what they want.
Focus
