The Secret History of Las Vegas Quotes

“We are hunting the demons that haunt others. We get a smell and off we go. And you know why, Sunil? You know why we are so good at hunting the demons of others? Because we are so good, gifted even, at stalking and evading our own. But all demons hunters think that they are really heroes, and you know what all heroes need?”
― Chris Abani, The Secret History of Las Vegas

“circles of hell. He hated to admit it, but Eugene had been right in his choice of Inferno, except their interpretations differed. Where Eugene saw only the internal battle of the privileged soul, Sunil saw the entire architecture and structures of racism and apartheid: three concentric circles of life and economics. Color-coded circles for easy understanding, whites at the heart, coloreds at the next remove, and finally, the blacks at the outermost circle; the closest to hell—the strange inverse sense of apartheid.”
― Chris Abani, The Secret History of Las Vegas

“I would say it is because the striving and the power keep you from realizing just how helpless you really are. It protects you from facing the fact that others are manipulating you, that regardless of what you might claim, your philosophy is simply a way to rationalize what you do for others too afraid to do their own dirty work; that you are in a way also a victim of the apartheid state. You”
― Chris Abani, The Secret History of Las Vegas

“Do you think anything ever changes, Salazar asked. That we can make a difference? That we will become a better species? I don’t know, I’m not sure if it even matters. I think all that matters is that we don’t shrink away from the truth and that we keep trying, Sunil said. I like that. Push the stone up the fucking hill because we should. Yes,”
― Chris Abani, The Secret History of Las Vegas

“blacks. As in any free market, the coloreds were the middle classes, as it were—those who would give their lives to maintain the status quo, a life they knew they could never improve but which had meaning only because there were those who suffered worse; that in fact, a larger population suffered worse.”
― Chris Abani, The Secret History of Las Vegas

“Something that had the quality of a dimly lit stage set just before the curtains rise on opening night. There was a rhythm to it, a beckoning, and a bittersweet tear in time.”
― Chris Abani, The Secret History of Las Vegas

“as his mother told Grandma Marie, there are no words for some”
― Chris Abani, The Secret History of Las Vegas

“He too, it seemed, had come to believe that he could somehow escape history. That it was possible, and even desirable, to live in a perpetual present.”
― Chris Abani, The Secret History of Las Vegas

“There had been many such experiments when he worked in South Africa, in Vlakplaas, a notorious apartheid death camp.”
― Chris Abani, The Secret History of Las Vegas

“Time was the only variable in every equation of power and oppression-how long before the pot boiled over.”
― Chris Abani, The Secret History of Las Vegas

“Circuses are about entertainment and juggling and animals and all that shit. Sideshows are about freaks, about people and the limits of acceptability. We push those limits. If a circus is an escape, Fire said, a sideshow is a confrontation.”
― Chris Abani, The Secret History of Las Vegas