in order to make himself thoroughly undesirable, he will speak. - Jean-Paul Sartre

There’s the story of a person who does this, does that, but it isn’t I, I have nothing in common with him. He travels through countries I know no more about than if I had never been there. Sometimes, in my story, it happens that I pronounce these fine names you read in atlases, Aranjuez or Canterbury. New images are born in me, images such as people create from books who have never travelled. My words are dreams, that is all.

This is the contradiction of racism, colonialism, and all forms of tyranny: in order to treat a man like a dog, one must first recognize him as a man.

"Undoubtedly, on his death bed, at
that moment when, ever since Socrates, it has been proper to pronounce certain elevated words, he told
his wife, as one of my uncles told his, who
had watched beside him for twelve nights, "I do not thank you, Therese; you have only done your
duty.