Dark Matter Quotes

“He did not really mind that none of the delegates had spoken to him before leaving. But he was crushed by his failure to get them to recognize what he had long known: that without power, a people must use cunning and guile. Or were cunning and guile, based on superior understanding of a situation, themselves power? Certainly, most black people knew and used this art to survive in their everyday contacts with white people. It was only civil rights professionals who confused integrity with foolhardiness. “Faith”
― Sheree Thomas, Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora

“One reason for this absence is that black writers have only recently entered the popular genres in force. Our writers have historically been regarded as a footnote best suited to address the nature of our own chains. So, if black writers wanted to branch out past the realism of racism and race, they were curtailed by their own desire to document the crimes of America. A further deterrent was the white literary establishment’s desire for blacks to write about being black in a white world, a limitation imposed upon a limitation.”
― Sheree Thomas, Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora

“What will you do with the information you have?” “Keep it close to my heart,” Xotama said. “I see that knowing too much, too soon, is not wisdom.”
― Sheree Renée Thomas, Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora

“Healthy people say no one can concentrate like a DGD. Healthy people have all the time in the world for stupid generalizations and short attention spans.”
― Sheree Renée Thomas, Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora

“This reporter is a registered theorist on why White people are fascinated by listening to the sounds of their victims’ pathetic crying.”
― Sheree Renée Thomas, Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora

“They both had pieces missing and were tired of failing. Neither of them had learned, after two divorces, that people can’t be applied to wounds like gauze.”
― Sheree Renée Thomas, Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora

“In hindsight, I came to realize I shouldn’t have let him give me things I didn’t want.”
― Sheree Renée Thomas, Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora