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"These jagged pieces fought within him each day, but they formed him all the same, and he would need all of himself to get through this moment."

"For months, he'd been torn between anger and hunger for vengeance, and the opposite pull begging him to let go of that anger, to move forward. Each side came with its own brand of shame that brought the flask to his lips to quiet it all."

"I know the difference between 'could' and 'will'. Those words spell the difference between a good man and a bad one. The light and the dark. I know which one you turn to."

"Parker Palmer offers this wisdom about doing the 'right thing': 'Right action requires only that we respond faithfully to our own inner truth and to the truth around us... If an action is rightly taken, taken with integrity, its outcomes will achieve whatever is possible - which is the best that anyone can do.'"

"Few of us have been taught to think critically about issues of social injustice. We have been taught not to notice or to accept our present situation as give, 'the way it is'."

"I have heard many people say, 'But I don't know enough! I don't even recognize most of those names. I don't have enough of the facts to be able to speak up about racism or anything else!' They are not alone. We have all been miseducated in this regard. Educating ourselves and others is an essential step in the process of change."

"She had fears, but who would tell her story if she didn't? For many people of color, learning to break the silence is a survival issue. To remain silent would be to disconnect from her own experience, to swallow and internalize her own oppression. The cost of silence is too high."

"Because of White culture silence about racism, my White students often had little experience engaging in dialogue about racial issues. They had not much practice at overcoming their inhibitions to speak."

"The rich are born rich and die richer, the rest of us die early."

"He hadn't seen her as something to bend into whatever shape would better serve him.
He'd seen her as a person. A person who had said no."

"People with one face, one story, have weaknesses, vulnerabilities, things to exploit and dangle over their heads. But to be no one was to have nothing to lose and nothing to gain. That was tree freedom, plain and simple."

"'Don't kid yourself,' she said, challenge written in every line of her face. 'I didn't make you small; you were small to begin with.'"

“He had to trap this magic and save his kingdom, even if it meant committing acts that made him a stranger to himself.”

“She’d spent so much time drowning in her past that she hadn’t been able to swim to the surface and see a future for herself that wasn’t stained with blood and fear.”

"And if a people's mother tongue was wiped out, if their connection to their past, their ancestors, their history, was forgotten, then they could no longer call upon magic."

"Everything had its season, but seasons always repeated."

“Cultural identities are not solely determined in response to racial ideologies, but racism increases the need for a positive self- identity in order to survive psychologically.”

"With four thugs holding her down and her magic stolen, this was anything but voluntary, but people like Kol changed the definition of that word when it suited. Nos became yeses as they flowed in one ear and out the other."

"Alfie stroked the book with his thumb. What was good and bad had been obvious then. Now, as he stared at the illegal books he'd stolen from a thief, the line was not so clear."

"But before the corrupted god could darken the globe, a man of dark and a woman of light embraced to become one, the man of dark falling and stretching at her feet to become her shadow. Their embrace created mankind as it was always meant to be - a balance of light and dark. From that balance, magic was born and the world finally found its footing."

"Enslavement was strange that way. Though his parents always spoke about what had been taken from them during Englass's reign - their autonomy, their magic, their culture, their pride - to Alfie, it wasn't so much about how much Englass had taken from them, but how little of themselves Castallan had taken back after expelling their conquerors."

"He'd been taught from a young age that magic was the foundation of this world, the threads that bound men to each other and the land they lived on."

"Finn glanced up at the great timepiece, its hands ticking in an endless procession of time lost and time to be gained."

"During his time on board the ship, the drink left him too bold to hide how lost he felt, searching for meaning in his grief only to find anger."

"While the traditional arts and crafts were worthy of study, the curriculum embodied a "museum" perspective whereby the traditional life of Alaska Natives were studied as "an interesting curiosity commemorating the past." Ongtooguk explained, "The most disturbing picture of Inupiaq culture, then, was of its static nature - something that had happened 'back then' rather than something that was happening now."

“After Clementine once criticized his drinking, he told her, ‘Always remember, Clemmie, that I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.’”

“Churchill’s private study and famed Cabinet Room were on the ground floor, where a stately quiet prevailed, as if the clamor of daily life were muffled by the sheer weight of British history.”

"The task for each of us, White and of color, is to identify what our own sphere of influence is (however large or small) and to consider how it might be used to interrupt the cycle of racism."

"Effective consciousness-raising about racism must also point the way toward constructive action. When people don't have the tools for moving forward, they tend to return to what is familiar, often becoming more vigorous in their defense of the racial status quo than they were initially."

"If viewing oneself as a group member threatens one's self-definition, making the paradigm shift from individual to group member will be painful."