"The shape the words end up taking are themselves the meaning of the words, they are retrospectively what we meant to say. There's no way of knowing this until you register it in visible form. But the other side of this is that you do have some idea of where you are going."

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Source: Source: www.3ammagazine.com

About the author

Teju Cole

Author, Photographer

Teju Cole is a Nigerian-American writer and photographer known for his profound explorations of identity and memory in works like 'Open City'.

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Teju Cole Author, Photographer

"Each neighborhood of the city appeared to be made of a different substance, each seemed to have a different air pressure, a different psychic weight: the bright lights and shuttered shops, the housing projects and luxury hotels, the fire escapes and city parks."

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Teju Cole Author, Photographer

"I deeply respect American sentimentality, the way one respects a wounded hippo. You must keep an eye on it, for you know it is deadly."

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Teju Cole Author, Photographer

"The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege."

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Teju Cole Author, Photographer

"We experience life as a continuity, and only after it falls away, after it becomes the past, do we see its discontinuities. The past, if there is such a thing, is mostly empty space, great expanses of nothing, in which significant persons and events float."

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Teju Cole Author, Photographer

"The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening."

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