Apeirogon

by Colum McCann

Apeirogon: a shape with a countably infinite number of sides.

He had learned that the cure for fate was patience.

It struck him early on that people were afraid of the enemy because they were terrified that their lives might get diluted, that they might lose themselves in the tangle of knowing each other.

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I have begun to change myself.

Short streets, long memories.

Freedom, he said, begins between the ears.

one of the principal qualities of pain is that it demands to be defeated first, then understood.

Power already knows the truth. It tries to hide it. So you have to speak out against power.

We are not doomed, but we have to try to smash the forces that have an interest in keeping us silent.

those who hold guns are captured by those guns.

The best music forgets that it is being sung.

I began to realize that violence is exactly what our opponents wanted us to use. They prefer violence because they can deal with it. They are vastly more sophisticated with violence. It’s nonviolence that is hard to deal with,

Rumi, the poet, the Sufi, said something that I will never forget: Beyond right and wrong there is a field, I’ll meet you there.

There will be security for everyone when we have justice for everyone.

I want to wish you a long life because I hope your conscience will wake you up.”

The hero makes a friend of his enemy.

I don’t have time for hate anymore. We need to learn how to use our pain. Invest in our peace, not in our blood, that’s what we say.

But here’s the key—we are not voiceless, no matter how much silence there is.

Avoid that which requires an apology.

Satyagraha: the revelation of truth and the confrontation of injustice through nonviolent means.

There was always the sickening feeling when he wondered if they too knew that moment of nothingness that exists between the bullet and the fall.

Among the Bedouin, no greater gift could be given to an outsider than an Arabian war mare.

The gun had no choice but the gunman did.

We do not talk about peace, we make peace.

A man who requires revenge should dig two graves.

So much of it came down to the historical narrative, but what worried him, always, was the duration of the present, combined with the echo of the past, while trying to negotiate a clearer pathway to the future.

What it meant to remember, as opposed to never forgetting.

They thrived in the grandeur of their rage. Yet underneath their masks they were riddled with self-doubt.

He could sense the fear behind the clenched jaw.

On a tightrope, he thought, you look into the distance. Not down at your feet.

Ullmann had once written that the secret of every work of art was the annihilation of matter through form.