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Je reprends ma course vers l'hôtel, laissant derrière moi la capitale amochée. Partout autour, il y a cette méfiance qui gronde. L'étau de nos désillusions se resserre, nous presse de rester vigilants, de ne rien tenir pour acquis. Des vers de Miron me happent: au nord du monde nous pensions être à l'abri loin des carnages de peuples de ces malheurs de partout qui font la chronique de ces choses ailleurs qui n'arrivent qu'aux autres incrédules là même de notre perte et tenant pour une grâce notre condition? Je m'arrête au milieu du pont, me retourne et contemple de nouveau la colline et les deux énormes grues qui enserrent le Parlement. Comme si l'idée même de la démocratie était brisée.

— Du bitume et du vent by Vincent Vallières (Page 158)

It would take me a few months. But I was stumbling my way to a revelation: that everything I'd been told about success was wrong. I couldn't hustle my way to becoming a good doctor. Working harder wasn't going to bring me happiness. And there was another path to fulfilment: one that wasn't lined with constant anxiety, sleepless nights, and a concerning dependence on caffeine. I didn't have all the answers, not by a long shot. But for the first time, I could make out the beginnings of an alternative approach. An approach that didn't hinge on exhaustingly hard work, but on understanding what made hard work feel better. An approach that focused on my wellbeing first, and used that wellbeing to drive my focus and motivation second. An approach I would come to refer to as feel-good productivity.

— Feel-Good Productivity by Ali Abdaal (Page 4)

La façon dont on écoute la musique a beau avoir vécu plusieurs révolutions, le rôle des disquaires indépendants est resté au cœur de l'affaire. Parce que l'écoute de certaines œuvres mérite d'être préparée. L'algorithme n'accotera jamais le lien tissé entre l'artiste et le mélomane par un humain engagé qui s'est forgé une culture musicale en donnant de son corps, de son temps, de son cœur. Rien de mieux que ces émules de Lester Bangs, de Rob Sheffield ou de Dominic Tardif, des chroniqueurs culturels qui vivent pour la muse et ne se fient jamais à la tendance.

— Du bitume et du vent by Vincent Vallières (Page 42 - 43)

Lorsque j'accède à la vastitude de la baie des Chaleurs, une furieuse envie se confirme après ces longues heures de silence. Celle d'embrasser ma chance. Étonné d'être là, encore. Cette vie itinérante n'en a pas fini avec moi. Le soleil décline lorsque j'atteins New Richmond. L'impression de fuir ne m'habite plus maintenant, mais j'apprends toujours à apprivoiser l'absence.

— Du bitume et du vent by Vincent Vallières (Page 25)

Encore à ce jour, quand je tourne la dernière page d'un livre, je ressens le même sentiment de fierté qui m'a habité lorsque j'ai accompagné Tintin sur la Lune. Qu'il s'agisse d'un roman, d'un essai ou d'une bande dessinée, c'est une œuvre de plus à mon tableau de chasse. Avant de remettre un bouquin sur sa tablette, je prends toujours un moment pour observer les traces qu'il gardera de ce temps passé entre mes mains, pour mesurer l'empreinte qu'il laissera en moi.

— Du bitume et du vent by Vincent Vallières (Page 17)

She watched them half with derision and half wanting to be one of them, to get caught up in the Carnival spirit. She, like them, had been grown for export, like sugar cane and arrowroot, to go away, to have distaste for staying. She had been taught that there was nothing worthwhile about staying; you should "go away and make something of yourself," her family had said. It was everyone's dream to leave. Leaving was supposed to change class and station. "You could be something," they'd said. This something was based on the exceptions who had returned, M.D.s or LL.B.s in hand, and had been elevated to brown-skin status; not like the rest of them "nigger people." To be something meant that, no matter what else. The majority of those who had gone away worked hard all their lives, without letters behind their names, without changes in the texture and colour of their skins, and had not returned, but had sent messages in letters and parcels and money, enriching the myth of easiness and prosperity in the metropole. On the other occasions, on which Ayo had returned, she had found the myth alive and kicking and had made enemies trying to dispel it. No one back home believed that things were not better out here and no one could be convinced of it. People home would look rather nastily and accuse her of liking good things for herself and not for others.

— Sans Souci by Dionne Brand (Page 179)

They hesitated before smiling with each other. They had learned hesitancy here. They had learned caution. It wasn't proper to yell each other's names across a street here. It wasn't right to blare music out of windows for neighbors to hear. Heaven knows enough policemen had come knocking on their doors for that faux pas. Here, all that was courtesy became insult; all that was human turned to signs of backwardness. They had traded bold-facedness for high-rise apartments. Going home, they sized up each other's clothing and hairstyles. Did they look good enough to have lived here, did they look good enough to return and not have someone notice that life here wasn't all that rosy. Did they look good enough to inspire envy. They waited for the doors of the plane to close behind them. They sensed their ordinary cheerfulness rising to be released. They knew it would be embarrassing to let go in the airport. Behind the doors they would breathe out the relief of leaving Toronto, that uncomfortable name of a city, where their lives were tight and deceptive. What a joy it would be to talk and have people answer, to settle into gregariousness and frown on reserve.

— Sans Souci by Dionne Brand (Page 178)

In Black joy, there is a space created to make real the possibility of what other ways of being can be. An impulse to spin in a circle simply to enjoy the sun and let it kiss your skin can be an intentional practice. Through that moment of joy, we can create the opportunity to look at both ourselves and one another more deeply. It makes room to understand more clearly not only what brings us joy but also what takes it away. How to eliminate that force altogether becomes an idea because of that joyous moment. That sigh after a deep belly laugh that brings you back down to the present is a moment that can and should lead to action. Again, it is a practice that there are more ways to exist and be well than we've had before and currently have today.

— The Black Joy Project by Kleaver Cruz (Page 38)

Anyway, alienation, my ass! Camus! Camus wrote a novel about a European, un pied noir, killing an Arab on a beach outside Algiers. He works it so that the sun gets into the European's eyes (they have their rituals) and the heat and his emotionlessness to his mother's dying and all this. But killing an Arab, pumping successive bullets into an Arab, is not and never has been an alienating experience for a European. It was not unusual. It need not symbolize any alienation from one's being or anything like that. It was customary in Algeria, so how come all this high shit about Camus. Didn't it ever strike you that Meursault was a European and the Arab on the beach was an Arab? And the Arab was an Arab, but this European was Mersault.

— Sans Souci by Dionne Brand (Page 149)