"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."
"There was a feeling during the years of George W. Bushs presidency that his gracelessness as well as his appetite for war were linked to his impatience with complexity. He acted from the gut, and was economical with the truth until it disappeared."
3 likes
Source: Teju Cole (2016). “Known and Strange Things”, p.180, Faber & Faber
About the author
Same author
More quotes by Teju Cole
"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."
"Writing as writing. Writing as rioting. Writing as righting. On the best days, all three."
"The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege."
"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."
"The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening."