J[E] M[E PROMèNE]

 Under my pile of books: À chaque touche, je risque ma vie.

[underthepile]

“For they say that language, or word, leads us to ‘worlding,’ that phenomenon that happens when the world suddenly opens up to us, and in its opening up to us, a whole new world mediated by word appears to us, the world appearing in its grandeur, splendor, order. There is such a thing as the ineffable — ‘amanga’ in the Ilokano language — and in that ineffability, language becomes full, and in the mind, we understand, and we understand because language makes that understanding possible. That is the case of all human languages. That is the case of the Ilokano language.”

— Aurelio Solver Agcaoili, Pagsasao: Our Languages for Our Children

[underthepile]

“I did not sail upon this voyage to gain honor or wealth…and I do not lie.”

— Christopher Columbus, “Letter to Ferdinand and Isabella Regarding the Fourth Voyage” (1503)

[underthepile]

“What will it avail you to take that by force you may quickly have by love…?”

— “Powhatan’s Discourse of Peace and War,” The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles: With the Names of the Adventurers, Planters, and Governors from Their First Beginning, Ano: 1584. To This present 1624.

[underthepile]

“Lyra put her hand on the stick, Pequeno, and remembered Farder Coram saying that if good people wanted to defeat evil ones, they would have to be unscrupulous. Perhaps being unscrupulous might include killing people, sometimes.”

— Phillip Pullman, The Rose Field (2025)

[sacredwhores]

"The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the "state of emergency" in which we live is not the exception but the rule. We must attain to a conception of history that is in keeping with this insight. Then we shall clearly realize that it is our task to bring about a real state of emergency, and this will improve our position in the struggle against Fascism. One reason why Fascism has a chance is that in the name of progress its opponents treat it as a historical norm. The current amazement that the things we are experiencing are "still" possible in the twentieth century is not philosophical. This amazement is not the beginning of knowledge - unless it is the knowledge that the view of history which gives rise to it is untenable."

Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History

[underthepile]

“[H]ow wonderful, truly, to have a friend whose silence you adored.”

— R. F. Kuang, Katabasis (2025)

[underthepile]

It was a world of shouting men and it stank of them!

— Xiaolu Guo, Call Me Ishmaelle (2025)

[underthepile]

“Most insecurities were palimpsests, scars long since grown over but still feared.”

— Isa Agajanian, Modern Divination

[underthepile]

“I knew a wrench married in an afternoon as she went to the garden for parsley to stuff a rabbit, and so may you, sir.”

— William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew

[underthepile]

“We were a generation raised on behavioral theory. We could see both the buttons and the fingers that pushed them, but that awareness did nothing to shield us from their effects.”

—Jade Chang, What a Time to Be Alive

[underthepile]

“(To be a girl is to have your edges torn away by people who do not deserve any part of you.)”

— Jade Chang, What a Time to Be Alive (2025)

[underthepile]

“They put their coats in a small square locker, Hector handed out coins for the lockers, and Ina smiled when she realized he must have planned ahead, he knew that the lockers only accepted coins, so he had saved four coins to ensure a smooth entry to the aquarium. For some people, love needed to be proven with diamond rings or surprise weekends in Paris, but for Ina, love meant the ability to plan ahead and seeing Hector hand out those coins to her sisters made her realize that he loved her.”

— Jonas Hassen Khemiri, The Sisters

[underthepile]

“A rumor spread that there were men among the protesters with guns...Perhaps it was true. Perhaps it wasn't. But the more adamant the protesters were, the more they fought back, the more they refused to scatter, the more certain the police were that they were armed. Defiance like this could surely not exist unless supported by weapons. So, they suspected. In the end, the police couldn't bear the suspense of their suspicion and opened fire….In a fast-forward blur, thirteen local boys were dead. This was how history moved, the slow build, the quick burn, and in an incoherence, the leaping both backward and forward, swallowing the young into old hate. The space between life and death, in the end, too small to measure.”

[underthepile]

“How did her feet manage to walk? She would thank them all her life.”

— Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

[underthepile]

“What was a country but the idea of it? … How often could you attack it before it crumbled? To undo something took practice; it was a dark art and they were perfecting it. With each argument the next would be easier, would become a compulsive act, and like wrecking a marriage, it would be impossible to keep away, to stop picking at wounds even if the wounds were your own.”

— Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

[underthepile]

“These words that took direct aim at something elusive had the deliberateness of previous consideration, she realized with a thud of joy.”

— Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

[underthepile]

“I walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn't expect to arrive.”

— Jorge Luis Borges, “Boast of Quietness”