As I have repeated incessantly throughout this book, there is no direction you can turn that does not face you toward certain death.
I wanted to ask, ‘Why did you let this happen?’ but that was blasphemy. You never ask why. It was not a question for you to ask.
My father said that my curiosity was the last obstacle I had to overcome to be a true master harmonizer. If there was one thing my father and I disagreed on, it was that; I believed I could only be great if I were curious enough to seek greatness.
Now, in her fourteenth year on earth, if there was one rule she lived by it was the fact that Stories were soothsayers, truth-tellers and liars.
In Sankofa’s years on the road, she’d learned that people were complicated. They wore masks and guises to protect or hide their real selves. They reinvented themselves. They destroyed themselves. They built on themselves. She understood people and their often contradictory ways...
You’re smaller than I imagined you,” she said with a smirk. She took a puff from her cigarette and exhaled the smoke. It smelled sweet and heady. This was the type of cigarette that made people see God, slowed time and attracted happiness. “Maybe your imagination is not big enough,” Sankofa said.
Who are the big eye? Are they a secret part of the American government or a powerful private corporation? Is there a difference?
Why did you call me over?” Sankofa asked. The woman crossed her arms over her chest, inspecting Sankofa as if she were the daughter of her best friend. “I like to look into the eyes of hurricanes,” she said.
When you do math fractals long enough, you kick yourself into treeing just enough to get lost in the shallows of the mathematical sea.
She loved this tree so much and every so often, it seemed to love her back, too, its leaves looking greener in the sunshine than any other tree.
People treat it with more respect than they treat any police officer. Maybe because the robot is polite, helpful and never asks for bribes.
They say that when faced with a fight you cannot win, you can never predict what you will do next.
She slurped her coffee loudly. “If you hide forever, you’ll never find anything.
I saw the White House while it was still worth seeing.
This was the type of cigarette that made people see God, slowed time and attracted happiness.
They hate what it does, yet Ultimate Corp continues doing it. It’s something more than human, by Allah. It’s the beast, a djinn. Fire and air, insubstantial, but very real. Human beings created it, but they will never control it.
Your generation has lost the art of proverb, the gift of wordplay, the science of fiction, the jujuism of the African,” he said picking up the joint he’d placed on the sand beside him.
I knew I could always return to my books. Not escape, return. I knew so much, but so little. You can have knowledge, but you are nothing without wisdom.
My ancestors are dancing.
She’s the adopted child of the Angel of Death. Beware of her. Mind her. Death guards her like one of its own.” There was truth in every single one of the stories.
My mother always tells me that anyone who gets enjoyment from other people’s misery will eventually get the greatest discomfort from his or her own miseries.