falling; falling deeper and deeper

“Cooperation, when it’s objective is personal gain, should never be confused with solidarity.”

“‘There is a better world,’ a man said. “But it’s more expensive.”

“You think you know hardship, but men have a gift for finding new ways to make women suffer.”

A golden cage is still a cage.

Do not let what you gained this day be so easily lost.

Remember that kind of wanting? That kind that’s just for yourself? And you don’t even have to feel guilty about it? You wouldn’t know you should.

Can you love someone you don’t remember? Can you love someone you don’t know?

Explaining is not excusing; understanding is not forgiving.

How you choose to die can reflect how you chose to live.

The scars you can’t see are the ones that hurt the most.

Things got bad there for a second, I know, darling. But there's still a life to be lived.

There was a place for him on this earth, he knew then. A place where learning was paramount and strange viewpoints were encouraged; a place where one's worth was measured by their ideas rather than height (or ear size); a place where parents didn't putter and pout and drink until one of them hit the other one, where showers and meals were communal, where brunette women wore their hair short, where good boys were made into to great men, where golden lights lit pathways to the truth, and where acceptance happened before you even arrived...and that place was college.

Words have power. And I may be privileged and have a higher IQ than any of our former teachers, but when people look at me? They see a black, male teenager. And there is nothing quite as frightening to some folks as an angry young black man.