The job of the writer is to take a close and uncomfortable look at the world they inhabit, the world we all inhabit, and the job of the novel is to make the corpse stink.
Walter MosleyRead
Our collective freedom... depends on our ability to defend the rights of others.
Interpretation
Defending the rights of others is essential for ensuring our own freedom.
This quote by Walter Mosley emphasizes the interconnectedness of individual freedoms and the obligation to protect the rights of others in society. It suggests that our own liberty is not fully realized unless we advocate for and stand up for the freedoms of those around us, highlighting the importance of solidarity and mutual respect in a just society.
In practice
In a speech about social justice, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of advocacy.
The job of the writer is to take a close and uncomfortable look at the world they inhabit, the world we all inhabit, and the job of the novel is to make the corpse stink.
At one time if you were a black writer you had to be one of the best writers in the world to be published. You had to be great. Now you can be good. Mediocre. And that's good.
My father cared about the world he lived in, and so he admitted his confusion about his place in America because he didn't want me to make the same mistake in my life.
Many & most moments go by with us hardly aware of their passage. But love & hate & fear cause time to snag you, to drag you down like a spider's web holding fast to a doomed fly's wings. And when you're caught like that you're aware of every moment & movement & nuance.
We are not trapped or locked up in these bones. No, no. We are free to change. And love changes us. And if we can love one another, we can break open the sky.
All writing is that structure of revelation. There's something you want to find out. If you know everything up front in the beginning, you really don't need to read further if there's nothing else to find out.
Midway upon the journey of our life
I've seen a lot of patriots and they all died just like anybody else if it hurt bad enough and once they were dead their patriotism was only good for legends; it was bad for their prose and made them write bad poetry. If you are going to be a great patriot i.e. loyal to any existing order of government (not one who wishes to destroy the existing for something better) you want to be killed early if your life and works won't stink.
The genocide (in Rwanda) was a collective act. What made it possible, what made that final political crime possible, was the absence, the erasure, of seeing the other. Of knowing, of feeling, of being with the other. And when that's removed, then politics_x000D_ can become genocidal.
Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God.
Where eldest Night And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold Eternal anarchy amidst the noise Of endless wars, and by confusion stand; For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four champions fierce, Strive here for mast'ry.
O sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams That bring to my remembrance from what state I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere.
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