“Standing in line is a form of oppression.”

Our lives are composed of a finite set of moments that we choose how to spend.

The urge to make art or contemplate philosophy does not go away when you are sick. Those urges just become transfigured by illness.

We’re all just facilitators. The real business is done by readers.

The human tongue is like wasabi: it’s very powerful, and should be used sparingly.

You do not immortalize the lost by writing about them. Language buries, but does not resurrect.

He liked the mere act of reading, the magic of turning scratches on a page into words inside his head.

We just did an awesome job of not dying.

Maybe our favorite quotations say more about us than about the stories and people we’re quoting.

Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.

I don’t think your missing pieces ever fit inside you again once they go missing.

I’m not saying that everything is survivable. Just that everything except the last thing is.

You do not immortalize the lost by writing about them. Language buries, but does not resurrect.

He liked the mere act of reading, the magic of turning scratches on a page into words inside his head.

We just did an awesome job of not dying.

Maybe our favorite quotations say more about us than about the stories and people we’re quoting.

Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.

You threw water on my fire when I was looking for gasoline.

Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory.

When we see others as the enemy, we risk becoming what we hate. When we oppress others, we end up oppressing ourselves. All of our humanity is dependent upon recognizing the humanity in others.

If you want to keep people subjugated, the last thing you place in their hands is a Bible. There’s nothing more radical, nothing more revolutionary, nothing more subversive against injustice and oppression than the Bible.

When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said “Let us pray.” We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.

Where there is oppression, there will be resistance.

People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while, people just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.

The rage of the oppressed is never the same as the rage of the privileged.