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Quand on quitte son pays, on ignore qu'on ne reviendra plus. Il n'y a pas de retour possible, car tout change tout le temps. Les lieux, les gens, les usages. Même notre façon d'appréhender la vie. Si on ne change pas, les autres, eux, changent, et de cette manière nous changent. Perpétuel mouvement. Mais on ne sait pas ce que le temps fera de nous. On peut visualiser l'espace plus facilement. Le temps, c'est le monstre invisible qui dévore tout sur son passage. Ce genre de choses arrive à notre insu. On débarque dans un pays. On y passe des années. On oublie tout ce qu'on a fait pour survivre. Des codes appris à la dure. Chaque mauvais moment annulé par la tendresse d'un inconnu. Un matin, on est du pays. On se retrouve dans la foule. Et là, brusquement, on croise un nouveau venu et tout remonte à la surface.

— Tout ce qu'on ne te dira pas, Mongo by Dany Laferrière (Page 13)

The wounded child inside many males is a boy who, when he first spoke his truths, was silenced by paternal sadism, by a patriarchal world that did not want him to claim his true feelings. The wounded child inside many females is a girl who was taught from early childhood on that she must become something other than herself, deny her true feelings, in order to attract and please others. When men and women punish each other for truth telling we reinforce the notion that lies are better. To be loving we willingly hear each other's truth and, most important, we affirm the value of truth telling. Lies may make people feel better, but they do not help them to know love.

— All About Love by bell hooks (Page 49)

To know love we have to tell the truth to ourselves and to others. Creating a false self to mask fears and insecurities has become so common that many of us forget who we are and what we feel underneath the pretense. Breaking through this denial is always the first step in uncovering our longing to be honest and clear. Lies and secrets burden us and cause stress. When an individual has always lied, he has no awareness that truth telling can take away this heavy burden. To know this he must let the lies go.

— All About Love by bell hooks (Page 48)

Since the values and behavior of men are usually the standards by which everyone in our culture determines what is acceptable, it is important to understand that condoning lying is an essential component of patriarchal thinking for everyone. Men are by no means the only group who use lies as a way of gaining power over others. Indeed, if patriarchal masculinity estranges men from their selfhood, it is equally true that women who embrace patriarchal femininity, the insistence that females should act as though they are weak, incapable of rational thought, dumb, silly, are also socialized to wear a mask–to lie.

— All About Love by bell hooks (Page 42 - 43)

Trust is the foundation of intimacy. When lies erode trust, genuine connection cannot take place. While men who dominate others can and do experience ongoing care, they place a barrier between themselves and the experience of love.

— All About Love by bell hooks (Page 41)

The policeman's belly sticks out under his uniform, the man well fed, his teeth small ice chips. - Move it or I'll get you for loitering. Baxter stuffs his needle and thread in his pocket and starts walking. Loitering! Why would he want to loiter in a train station if he didn't have to? He had his fill of locomotives' hissing and screams long ago, had tired of their whistly spurts and steam farting the first day he started. The railyard smell always jerks his stomach, sometimes telling him he still hasn't eaten enough and his stomach is too soft. It reminds him of his mother accusing him of too much daydreaming, as though daydreaming was a crime because it sometimes made him late for school. Yes, perhaps he daydreamed too much, talked to stray dogs and geckos, trying to make them his friends, dithered over his fish at breakfast, drew pictures of the stars at bedtime.

— The Sleeping Car Porter by Suzette Mayr (Page 32)

A dictionary suggests itself.

— Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe (Page 18)

The anxiety that Hartman and others articulate around repeating this scene inheres in the awful configurations of power, desire, pleasure, and domination to be found not only in the original scene, but also in its transmission, transformation, and renewal, to which we in the present are equally inured. We know that the repetition of such horror does not make the violence of everyday black subjection undeniable because presented in its most spectacular form, does not confirm or confer humanity on the suffering black body, but all too often contributes to what Jesse Jackson calls—in the midst of the catastrophe of and catastrophic response to Hurricane Katrina's devastating effects on black people and communities in the U.S. Gulf Coast—'an amazing tolerance for black pain... [a] great tolerance for black suffering and black marginalization.'

— Monstrous Intimacies by Judith Halberstam, Lisa Lowe, Christina Elizabeth Sharpe (Page 2)