René

“She wondered why there were only two kinds of weather: hardship in the morning, and tribulation at night.”
― Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad

“The land she tilled and worked had been Indian land. She knew the white men bragged about the efficiency of the massacres, where they killed women and babies, and strangled their futures in the crib. Stolen babies working stolen land. It was an engine that did not stop, its hungry boiler fed with blood.”
― Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad

“Men start off good and then the world makes them mean. The world is mean from the start and gets meaner every day. It uses you up until you only dream of death.”
― Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad

“Flowers grow beneath her feet, but she is not dead at all. The years have not diminished the Rice Mother. I see her, fierce and magical. Stop despairing and call to her, and you will see, she will come bearing a rainbow of dreams.”
― Rani Manicka, The Rice Mother