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Affection never outlasted need. This was the first lesson the city taught me the hard way. The vast majority of us are merely pawns in someone else’s game. Don’t get defensive over this point. Embrace it. Once you do, you can begin to manipulate the board. Positioned correctly, pawns can checkmate kings.
Don’t reject the space you gravitate toward just because the windows aren’t stained glass and the congregation isn’t saved.
We are not so narrowly defined as society would have us believe. Yet the limits placed on our appetites, talents, and potential are implanted in us when we are children—too young to recognize the prisons built with words. We could blame it all on our families, but then we’d never find the keys to unlock our cells. The awful genius of our confinement is that we are both the prisoner and the warden. We tell ourselves daily that we aren’t free to do this or that because we are that or this. To escape such limited thinking, we don’t have to look far. The keys are in our pocket.
If we never meet our despicable adversaries, we’d never be forced to find out how brave, resilient, and cunning we can be.
The theory goes that governmental agencies don’t accidently make accessing information or resources difficult. They do this shit on purpose. The forms are confusing, and the record keeping is ass-backward because it reflects a policy choice. A decision has been made to repel the average citizen from gaining certain knowledge or opportunities.
When most people encounter the seemingly arbitrary and capricious workings of, for instance, the IRS or the DMV, they accept it because they’ve been trained to assume that the government is run by half-wits. They yell at the lowly staffer in front of them, then sulk away and comply with the absurd rules or give up.
My landlord’s identity was a secret because he belonged to a powerful constituency of wealthy building owners and real estate developers. None of them wanted tenants hounding them to provide safe living conditions. So they shielded their names by using shell companies like Russian nesting dolls. Plutus Property Management was a subsidiary of Sawyer Real Estate Investment Group; Sawyer Real Estate Investment Group was owned by Middlebrook Unlimited; Middlebrook Unlimited belonged to Firemort Holdings; Firemort Holdings was but a spawn of Williamdale Inc.; Williamdale Inc. was held by Bellriver
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Our mouths give voice to goals, dreams, and even lies. Ultimately, we will be judged on our follow-through, on our ability to turn our stirring words into reality.
Devils grow old, and the world around them eventually exceeds their understanding and control. Never forget that. Never let them forget it.
Winning rarely changes how people perceive us and almost never soothes our insecurities. Winning, as most of us conceive it, is external and public. I didn’t yet know that the most rewarding activities of my life would be those done in secret.
even during a pandemic, racism never fails to insert itself into the equation.
Women fill a need because they see a need. We don’t necessarily get pleasure from it. We don’t expect a reward. We don’t expect shit.”
The point is to let your bruised and bloodied bodies serve as evidence that the government means to kill you, if you so much as protest its bigoted policies.”
“It is difficult for the young to understand the strictures of the past. You want your elders to have fought every slight and grievous offense that came our way. But remember, at all times—even yours, even now—there are unjust laws and customs we abide. If you don’t believe me, tell people you’re gay and try to get a job as a schoolteacher. Take the man you love to city hall and try to marry him.
villains never stop to consider that they’ve done anything wrong.”
