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L'aventure c'est de rendre possible la découverte de nouveaux paysages intérieurs et non d'aller au bout du monde pour contempler ce que tout le monde peut voir n'importe où.

— Un certain art de vivre by Dany Laferrière (Page 18)

Park cruising is an outlet for guys — whether they're racialized, closeted, religious, married, or none of the above - and we need to recognize that. In such circum-stances, parks are often one of the few release points for pent-up desire. Providing such a release is a social good, one we should be wary of trying to deny to men who, for whatever reason, don't feel comfortable interacting with other aspects of queer life.

— Park Cruising by Marcus McCann (Page 207)

But I don't want to overemphasize that. Racialized men who are out and proud often don't feel comfortable participating in queer life in bars and nightclubs not because of shame but for another perfectly obvious reason: gay spaces reproduce racism in extremely pointed ways. The physical spaces, advertising, programming on the TVs, staffing choices, and sexual tastes of customers favour young, white, able-bodied guys. Casual racism and open hostility are so common for queer people of colour in these places that it's no wonder people seek out alternatives in the parks and bushes. When we assume that racialized queer people are less liberated than white queers, we are often projecting our own "residual, unac-knowledged shame" onto brown bodies, as academic Sally Munt points out.

— Park Cruising by Marcus McCann (Page 206 - 207)

Instead, shame is something we do with, for, and against other people. Sedgwick writes that shame is "relational." And not just that, but it's useful. The way Sedgwick tells it, shame "permanently intensifies or alters the meaning of" what it attaches to. And she sees this especially at work in many of the touchstones of queer and trans culture. If Sedgwick is right, then shame isn't something to run and hide from. It's not something to be cured. It's just a part of the experiences that make us who we are. Sedgwick sums it up this way, in one of my favourite metaphors in the literature of queer feeling: "Shame and pride, shame and dignity, shame and self-display, shame and exhibitionism are different interlinings of the same glove."

— Park Cruising by Marcus McCann (Page 202 - 203)

Stumbling on something unexpected is one of the great joys of living in a city — heck, of living anywhere near other people. It starts raining, you duck into a restaurant, and it becomes your new favourite place to eat. You stumble into a concert in a park, and it becomes a highlight of your summer. It's not that all accidents are happy, or that all surprises are good, but we don't know how something will affect us until after we've experienced it.

— Park Cruising by Marcus McCann (Page 46)

We experience the world as infinitely less hostile to blackness than it actually is. This shift happens particularly as we buy into liberal individualism and see our individual fate as black people in no way linked to the collective fate. It is that link that sustains full awareness of the daily impact of racism on black people, particularly its hostile and brutal assaults.

— Killing Rage by bell hooks (Page 17)

Confronting my rage, witnessing the way it moved me to grow and change, I understood intimately that it had the potential not only to destroy but also to construct. Then and now I understand rage to be a necessary aspect of resistance struggle. Rage can act as a catalyst inspiring courageous ac-tion. By demanding that black people repress and annihilate our rage to assimilate, to reap the benefits of material privilege in white supremacist capitalist patriarchal culture, white folks urge us to remain complicit with their efforts to colonize, oppress, and exploit.

— Killing Rage by bell hooks (Page 16)