“If you want to fly, you have to give up the things that weigh you down.“
Freedom is choosing your responsibility. It’s not having no responsibilities; it’s choosing the ones you want.
There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.
There is no such thing as race. None. There is just a human race – scientifically, anthropologically. Racism is a construct, a social construct… it has a social function, racism.
I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge – even wisdom. Like art.
If you take racism away from certain people – I mean, vitriolic racism as well as the sort of social racist – if you take that away, they may have to face something really terrible, misery, self-misery, and deep pain about who they are.
It’s important, therefore, to know who the real enemy is, and to know the function, the very serious function of racism, which is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and so you spend 20 years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Someone says you have no art so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms and so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary. There will always be one more thing.
Anger … it’s a paralyzing emotion … you can’t get anything done. People sort of think it’s an interesting, passionate, and igniting feeling — I don’t think it’s any of that — it’s helpless … it’s absence of control — and I need all of my skills, all of the control, all of my powers … and anger doesn’t provide any of that — I have no use for it whatsoever.”
If you’re going to hold someone down you’re going to have to hold on by the other end of the chain. You are confined by your own repression.
At some point in life the world’s beauty becomes enough. You don’t need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough.
I dream a dream that dreams back at me.