Everybody talks about genocides around the world, but when the killing is slow and spread over a hundred years, no one notices. Where there are no ma… - Percival Everett

I really wanted to read. Though Huck was asleep, I could not chance his waking and discovering me with my face in an open book. Then I thought, How could he know that I was actually reading? I could simply claim to be staring dumbly at the letters and words, wondering what in the world they meant. How could he know? At that moment the power of reading made itself clear and real to me. If I could see the words, then no one could control them or what I got from them. They couldn’t even know if I was merely seeing them or reading them, sounding them out or comprehending them. It was a completely private affair and completely free and, therefore, completely subversive.

There was nothing scarier than human sounds.

White people often spent time admiring their survival of one thing or another. I imagined it was because so often they had no need to survive, but only to live.