Perhaps this is what we mean by sanity: that, whatever our self-admitted eccentricities might be, we are not the villains of our own stories. In fact, it is quite the contrary: we play, and only play, the hero, and in the swirl of other people's stories, insofar as these stories concern us at all, we are never less than heroic.

Teju Cole

Categorized in : Mean Hero Self

I deeply respect American sentimentality, the way one respects a wounded hippo. You must keep an eye on it, for you know it is deadly.

hippo eye way

Writing as writing. Writing as rioting. Writing as righting. by Teju Cole

Writing as writing. Writing as rioting. Writing as righting.

rioting three writing

We experience life as a continuity, and only after it falls away, after it becomes the past, do we see its discontinuities. The past, if there is such a thing, is mostly empty space, great expanses of nothing, in which significant persons and events float.

space past fall

The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening.

emotional morning mean

The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.

emotional white justice

The energies of Lagos life- creative, malevolent, ambiguous- conv... by Teju Cole

The energies of Lagos life- creative, malevolent, ambiguous- converge at the bus stops

bus-stops energy creative

Things don't go away just because you choose to forget them. by Teju Cole

Things don't go away just because you choose to forget them.

you-choose going-away forget

Each neighborhood of the city appeared to be made of a different substance, each seemed to have a different air pressure, a different psychic weight: the bright lights and shuttered shops, the housing projects and luxury hotels, the fire escapes and city parks.

light new-york air

I suddenly feel a vague pity for all those writers who have to ply their trade from sleepy American suburbs, writing divorce scenes symbolized by the very slow washing of dishes.

plies divorce writing

The strange thing, though, is that most people who write novels these days seem to be aware of only a fraction of its possibilities. Kundera goes on and on about this, and I never tire of reading him on the subject, because I agree very deeply with it.

reading writing people

Yes, there's a relaying of internal states that only a novel can achieve. In my view, the novel is one of Europe's greatest gifts to the world. America and Africa collaborated to give the world jazz. We'll call it even.

views europe america

To be alive, it seemed to me, as I stood there in all kinds of sorrow, was to be both original and reflection, and to be dead was to be split off, to be reflection alone.

alive sorrow reflection

Not all coincidence has to be loaded with meaning. Sometimes, things simply recur because that's how it is in life, that's how the mood gets in. It's good to subtly overdo it too, as Nabokov does, as Sebald does. It's a good way to intensify that region of localized weather that we call a novel.

doe weather way

I just realized that we're facing here is an empathy gap. And this was just another way to generate conversation about something that nobody wanted to look at.

gaps empathy looks

But a book suggests conversation: one person is speaking to another, and audible sound is, or should be, natural to that exchange. So I read aloud with myself as the audience, and gave voice to another's words.

voice sound book

tried to focus on a particular aspect of this historical moment: the failure of mourning. This is something I haven't seen a great deal of in the writing around this disaster. And my view is that you write about disaster by writing around it, by writing allusively.

focus views writing

I adore imaginary monsters, but I am terrified of real ones. by Teju Cole

I adore imaginary monsters, but I am terrified of real ones.

adore real monsters

It is dangerous to live in a secure world. by Teju Cole

It is dangerous to live in a secure world.

secure dangerous world

I'm not trying to be in your face and take a picture that is like a journalistic kind of image. I got interested in a kind of complicated, compiled, visual field.

fields faces trying

A MOB is not, as is so often said, mindless. A MOB is single-mind... by Teju Cole

A MOB is not, as is so often said, mindless. A MOB is single-minded.

mindless said