Category: language

“speculative knowledge of freedom would establish the vision of what might be, even if unrealizable within the prevailing terms of order.”

“everyday practices explored the possibility of transfigured existence and cultivated an imagination of the otherwise and elsewhere”

“At secret meetings and freedom schools, hidden away in loopholes of retreat and hush arbors, gathered at the river or dwelling in the swamp, the enslaved articulated a vision of freedom that far exceeded that of the liberal imagination. It enabled them to conceive other ways of existing” (SH, Scenes of Subjection)

“split open the dreary world to expose an enchanted one”

“It was the name that called forth the true him.”

“The other selves were like the words he spoke—fabrications of the moment, misinformation required to protect Son from harm and to secure that one reality at least.”

“There were no photos of them, but they were there in the pictures of trees behind their houses, the fields where they worked, the river they fished, the church where they testified, the joints where they drank.”

“This is the place. Where you can take a choice.” (TM, Tar Baby)

“cities arranged primarily not to improve the lives of their citizens”

“absented itself from the art of the possible”

“Deriving not only from the landscape but from the claiming of it, from the romance of emigration, the radical abandonment of established attachments, this imagination remains obdurately symbolic, tending to locate lessons in what the rest of the country perceives only as scenery.” (JD)

“an invisible band strung between us, connecting us and preventing us from straying …”

“elegance attracted me. I liked the way it hid pain.”

“in my dream we were golden!”

“It gave me an unexpected but not unpleasant sense of stillness, of being outside of time” (ZS, Swing Time)

“this place is indifference. This place is utterly neutral on the question of whether he lives or dies; it doesn’t care about his last name or where he went to school; it hasn’t even noticed him.” (ESM, Sea of Tranquility)

Roses for the Home, Farmers’ Bulletin 750, by United States Department of Agriculture (Home and Garden Bulletin 25, May 1953).

“To garden is to make whole” […] “even if it’s a windowsill geranium high above a city street, it can be significant in meaning.”

“Close attention itself can be a kind of sustenance.” [Part of a] “system[s] of renewal” (RS)