31 Quotes by Rivers Solomon

Listen, then repeat. Listen, then repeat. That was all it took to pretend well. What was a person’s self but carefully articulated mimicry?

Why guards quoted this nonsense to justify themselves was beyond her. The whole point of occupying a position of power was that you got to do what you wanted with impunity. It seemed a waste of time to bother with rationalizations.

You're one of those who has to tune the world out and focus on one thing at a time. We have a word for that down here, women like you. Insiwa. Inside one. It means you live inside your head and to step out of it hurts like a caning.

We have never seen a Zoti Aleyu this new, this small, this fragile. How many who'd been just like this were swallowed whole? "Precious pup," we say. We cannot think about its origins. We cannot think of what sickness plagues surface-life affairs that they throw living creatures to the sea to die alone. We must not think of the surface-dwellers and two-legs at all. Only Zoti Aleyu.

It was strange to be having such a conversation with her Amaba, discussing their varied interpretations of the history. What had always seemed certain to Yetu wasn't so immutable. The living put their own mark on the dead. Goodness, how'd did she missed it?

It is easy to do that with the past, even with the blessing of the full visions of the history.

One can only go for so long without asking ‘who am I?’, ‘where do I come from?’, ‘what does all this mean?’, ‘what is being?’, ‘what came before me and what might come after?’. Without answers there is only a hole. A hole where a history should be that takes the shape of an endless longing. We are cavities.

Living without detail long-term memories allowed for spontaneity and lack of regret, but after a certain amount of time had passed, they needed more.

Forgetting was not the same as healing.