#cloudsplitter

“At this moment, all is change. Transformation seems permanent. I was trembling with a type of excitement that I had never felt before, a powerful mixture of anticipation and regret, as if I somehow knew that eternal gain and irretrievable loss were about to be parceled out equally—as if the idea of justice were about to be made a material thing.”

I could not imagine myself as a member of the ruling class, one of these grand men and women passing me on the street; consequently I thought that if I were an Englishman living in England, I would surely be one of those old Luddites, smashing machinery with hammers. And if I lived in one of the colonies, I would be like those old Maroons under Cudjo, escaped slaves living up in the mountains and slipping down to the plantations at night to set the cane fields on fire. In some countries, I said to myself, the only life you can properly desire is that of destroyer.

“Who can say which event is accidental and which is not? Or even if there exists such a thing as a true accident, a purely causeless event?”