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Open City

Book by Teju Cole · 3 quotes · Death, Might, Race

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Open City Quotes

“But, Julius, I don't know what you do in Africa, but I must say, I'm ready to fo into the forest. I am ready to go in. It is time for me to enter the forest and lie down, and let the lions come for me. I've done enough, I think, I've had a good life, and I'm in such terrible pain just now. Who might say ninety years is not enough? It is time. I say down next to him and held his small, cold hand in mine. He was tired, and I left him, so that he could rest. I told him I would return soon.”

DeathDyingAfrica
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“The sight of large masses of people hurrying down into underground chambers was perpetually strange to me, and I felt that all of the human race were rushing, pushed by a counterinstintive death drive, into movable catacombs. Above-ground I was with thousands of others in their solitude, but in the subway, standing close to strangers, jostling them and being jostled by them for space and breathing room, all of us reenacting unac-knowleged traumas, the solitude intensified.”

DeathSolitudeCrowds
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“A woman had died in the room next to mine, she had died on the other side of the wall I was leaning against, and I had known nothing of it. I had known nothing in the weeks when her husband mourned, nothing when I had nodded to him in greeting with headphones in my ears, or when I had folded clothes in the laundry room while he used the washer. I hadn't known him well enough to routinely ask how Carla was, and I had not noticed not seeing her around. that was the worst of it. I had noticed neither her absence nor the change - there must have been a change - in his spirit. It was not possible, even then, to go knock on his door and embrace him, nor speak with him at length. It would have been false intimacy.”

DeathMarriageNeighbors
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