Alexandra

“Robin wondered then how much of Anthony’s life had been spent carefully translating himself to white people, how much of his genial, affable polish was an artful construction to fit a particular idea of a Black man in white England and to afford himself maximum access within an institution like Babel. And he wondered if there would ever be a day that came when all this was unnecessary, when white people would look at him and Anthony and simply listen, when their words would have worth and value because they were uttered, when they would not have to hide who they were, when they wouldn’t have to go through endless distortions just to be understood.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“Agnethe falls to her knees on the stone, the dome of her head tilted back, her arms draped out at her sides in supplication. Lisbet has never seen someone pray in such a pose. When she benders her neck to speak to God, she feels the aim is to make herself as small as possible, turning inwards to find some tiny voice that perhaps sometimes she believes is from heaven, but is more often her mother's. She fails even at carrying God inside her like others seem to. But Agnethe prays like in the holy stories, as though God is everywhere, and she is showing herself as broadly and as boldly as she can.”
― Kiran Millwood Hargrave, The Dance Tree

“They could no longer look at the world and not see stories, histories, layered everywhere like centuries’ worth of sediment.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“As pretentious and lofty as it might sound, the point of treating any text as sacred is to learn to treat one another as sacred.”
― Vanessa Zoltan, Praying with Jane Eyre: Reflections on Reading as a Sacred Practice