Alexandra

“New words in English were a game to him, for in understanding the word he always came to understand something about English history or culture itself. He delighted when common words were, unexpectedly, formed from other words he knew. Hussy was a compound of house and wife. Holiday was a compound of holy and day. Bedlam came, implausibly, from Bethlehem. Goodbye was, incredibly, a shortened version of God be with you.”
― 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

“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

“The bees are at work int he boiling air, legs fat with pollen the priesets say they stole. But her bees are no thieves.

The bees. They are their own. It was one of the first lessons they taught her, even as she coaxed them to the skeps. They are not dumb beasts: they have their own mind even if it is the mind of the king bee. This is why they are spoken of so often in church, their obedience, their duty.
...

but Lisbet knows what only those who tend to them know. That wildness is the key to their success, that freedom sweetens their honey. That you cannot truly keep bees. You can only make them want to stay.”
― Kiran Millwood Hargrave, The Dance Tree