Quotes

Since I was young, I've been identified as a voracious reader. Though there's been some dips in this practice (I get busy, okay!) I think it still holds true. As of late, I've been trying to be more purposeful with my reading habits and branch out, as I was primarily a reader of science fiction or fantasy fiction and comics when I was in grade school. Nonfiction is an area of literature that has given me a lot of meaning and language to understand myself and the world better.

I also really like music. I put my creative energy in a lot of different places, so art in a medium I don't get graded on is a respite for me. I'll include some lyrics that have touched me here.

I'm not exactly sure how to organize this quotes section. Should each post have multiple quotes from the same source? How should I order the quotes? By the order I read or listened to them in their original context? By favoritism? These bridges will just have to be crossed when I get to them.

"Freedom is not an ideal located outside of man; nor is it an idea which becomes myth. It is rather the indispensable condition for the quest of human completion."

Paulo Freire, Pedegogy of the Oppressed, 1970

"My thoughts, dreams, plots, and my schemes

That's what's on my mind when I toss in my sleep

My heart like my pen when I jot and it bleed

My cart full of sin, when I shop it's a spree."

“E. Coli” The Alchemist feat. Earl Sweatshirt

"Science fiction is not “about the future.” Science fiction is in dialogue with the present. We SF writers often say that science fiction prepares people to think about the real future—but that’s because it relates to the real present in the particular way it does; and that relation is neither one of prediction nor one of prophecy. It is one of dialogic, contestatory, agonistic creativity. In science fiction the future is only a writerly convention that allows the SF writer to indulge in a significant distortion of the present that sets up a rich and complex dialogue with the reader’s here and now."

Samuel Delany, qtd. Matthew Salesses, 2024

"The concentration camp was never the normal condition for the average gentile German. Unless one was Jewish, or poor and unemployed, or actively leftist or otherwise openly anti-Nazi, Germany from 1933 until well into the war was not a nightmarish place. All the "good Germans" had to do was obey the law, pay their taxes, give their sons to the army, avoid any sign of political heterodoxy, and look the other way when unions were busted and troublesome people disappeared.

"Since many "middle Americans" already obey the law, pay their taxes, give their sons to the army, are themselves distrustful of political heterodoxy, and applaud when unions are broken and troublesome people are disposed of, they probably could live without too much personal torment in a fascist state—some of them certainly seem eager to do so. Orwell's imaginings to the contrary, what is so terrifying about fascism is its "normality," its compatibility with the collective sentiments of substantial numbers of "normal" persons—though probably never a majority in any society."

Michael Parenti, Fascism in a Pinstriped Suit, 1996

"Geophilia…recognizes matter’s promiscuous desire to affiliate with other forms of matter, regardless of organic composition or resemblance to human vitality."

Jeffrey Cohen, "Geophilia, or The Love of Stone", 2015

“Modernist manuals of writing often conflate story with conflict. This reductionism reflects a culture that inflates aggression and competition while cultivating ignorance of other behavioral options. No narrative of any complexity can be built on or reduced to a single element. Conflict is one kind of behavior. There are others, equally important in any human life, such as relating, finding, losing, bearing, discovering, parting, changing. Change is the universal aspect of all these sources of story. Story is something moving, something happening, something or somebody changing.”

Ursula K. Le Guin, Steering the Craft, 1998, qtd. Tumblr