Babel

by R.F. Kuang

if something did not suit them, they simply failed to acknowledge it,

And that’s how they win, brother. They pit us against each other. They tear us apart.’

But fear, was, of course, not rational.

‘Sometimes rare and expensive things are worse.’

He did not know that impressing a white man could be as dangerous as provoking one.

‘A curious defence,’ said Ramy, ‘to justify a vice with virtue.’

Chinamen are simply filthy, lazy, and easily addicted. And you certainly can’t blame England for the foibles of an inferior race. Not where there’s money to be made.’

skilled translators were often missionaries

Reminds me of Shogun

the people who suffered most had no power at all.

‘It’s just as big as we thought,’ Ramy said. ‘It’s just that we forgot the rest of it mattered. We got so good at refusing to see what was right in front of us.’

It was an odd conversation, conveyed through four people, none of whom spoke directly to the person he was listening to.

You must know the barbarians to control the barbarians, don’t you think?’

‘Would you let someone come in and tell you what words in your own language mean? We have words to use when we wish to insult.

Compromise required some acknowledgment that the other party deserved equal moral standing.

For all their talk of rights and dignity.’ ‘I think those principles only apply to those they find human.’

Did he owe Oxford his life, just because he had drunk champagne within its cloisters? Did he owe Babel his loyalty because he had once believed its lies?

The truth between them was not buried because it was painful, but because it was inconvenient,

even a gilded cage was still a cage.

Anger was a chokehold. Anger did not empower you. It sat on your chest; it squeezed your ribs until you felt trapped, suffocated, out of options. Anger simmered, then exploded. Anger was constriction, and the consequent rage a desperate attempt to breathe.

Could you intend a murder if you couldn’t remember wanting it?

You think if you suffer enough for whatever sins you’ve committed, then you’re absolved.’

‘There are no kind masters, Letty,’ Anthony continued. ‘It doesn’t matter how lenient, how gracious, how invested in your education they make out to be. Masters are masters in the end.’

I think it’s not inconceivable that one day, most of the world will speak only English.’

‘Nice comes from the Latin word for “stupid”,’* said Griffin. ‘We do not want to be nice.’

It’s hard to accept what you don’t want to see.’

No one’s focused on how we’re all connected. We only think about how we suffer, individually.

Grief suffocated. Grief paralysed. Grief was a cruel, heavy boot pressed so hard against his chest that he could not breathe. Grief took him out of his body, made his injuries theoretical.

It seemed to defy the laws of physics that Ramiz Rafi Mirza could be silenced by something so tiny as a bullet.

Why, he wondered, did white people get so very upset when anyone disagreed with them?

Let the pain slide off you like raindrops, without acknowledgment, without reaction, because to pretend it is not happening is the only way to survive.

how many times was he doomed to bend over a dying body, watching a life slip away, helpless to snatch it back?

Power did not lie in the tip of a pen. Power did not work against its own interests. Power could only be brought to heel by acts of defiance it could not ignore. With brute, unflinching force. With violence.

I don’t know if anyone’s even listening.’

‘But madness is incoherent.’ Professor Craft frowned, glancing back and forth between the two of them. ‘And lies are self-serving. This story – it benefits no one, certainly not these two,’ she said, pointing at Robin and Victoire, ‘and it is coherent.’

The real world so seldom interfered with the tower. They didn’t know what to do with it.

the obstacle was not the struggle, but the failure to imagine it was possible at all, the compulsion to cling to the safe, the survivable status quo.

They’d been prepared for sacrifice; they had not been prepared to win.

Violence shocked the system, because the system could not cannibalize itself and survive.

‘And if we’re going to starve to death, we may as well go out drunk.’

If the people could not be won over by words, they would be persuaded by destruction.

They needed to preserve the illusion of innocence, or at least of ignorance. But they expressed no further opposition,

How slender, how fragile, the foundations of an empire. Take away the centre, and what’s left? A gasping periphery, baseless, powerless, cut down at the roots.

This is the cost of inflating prices and artificially creating demand. It all works beautifully, until it doesn’t.’

this whole thing is your circus, isn’t it?’

So much for being the adult in the room

the oppressor would never sit down at the negotiating table when they still thought they had nothing to lose.

‘I think we all got good at choosing not to think about certain things.’

throat pulsed.

This hs been used a lot and I have no odea what that means

‘This is how colonialism works. It convinces us that the fallout from resistance is entirely our fault, that the immoral choice is resistance itself rather than the circumstances that demanded it.’

throat pulsed.

And again

How could you love someone who had hurt you so badly?