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“Aida watches Dennis open his tobacco pouch and stuff his pipe. As a child she was entranced by the process, and the glamorous stink of it, the special words: flake, shag, shank, dottle. He told her that each pipe had its own ghost, which is the taste when you suck it, empty and cold. Sometimes he let her taste the ghost.”
― Lesley Glaister, A Particular Man

“Consider also the special word they used: survivor. Something new. As long as they didn't have to say human being. It used to be refugee, but by now there was no such creature, no more refugees, only survivors. A name like a number -- counted apart from the ordinary swarm. Blue digits on the arm, what difference? They don't call you a woman anyhow. Survivor. Even when your bones get melted into the grains of the earth, still they'll forget human being. Survivor and survivor and survivor; always and always. Who made up these words, parasites on the throat of suffering!”
― Cynthia Ozick, The Shawl

“In our hearts we know that with a different fate, we, too, could be in the ranks of the dispossessed, stripped of our identities and belonging nowhere. The refugee becomes a sinister symbol of what can quickly happen once personhood is denied and people are transformed into disposable units of contemptible impediments to the greed or power-mongering of others.”
― Dave Mearns, Person-Centred Therapy Today: New Frontiers in Theory and Practice

“Fleeing from isolation, lack of purpose, and loss of identity, the people flock toward all offerings that give the illusion of purpose and community, regardless of how moronic they may be. And that's what nationalism has in common with fundamentalism. They are both moronic offerings that give the illusion of community. I say illusion, because this community isn't real; these ideologies aren't about equitable participation, but on the contrary about the unveiling and fortification of social injustices.”
― Marc-Uwe Kling, QualityLand

“You know why? Because I thought you were different from us. Yes, I thought you were something special, something different on this sad earth of ours. I wanted to escape with you from the white man’s hollow materialism, from his lack of faith, his humble and frustrated sexuality, from his lack of joy, of laughter, of magic, of faith in the richness of after-life. In fact, I wanted to escape from everything you’re learning from us so quickly, from all the things people like you, Monsieur le depute, are daily injecting into the black man’s soul. Soon there’ll be no Africa left: people like you, Monsieur le depute, for all their talk of national independence, will deliver Africa to the West forever. You’ll, accomplish that final conquest for us. Of course, to achieve that, people like you will have to exercise
a tyranny and a cruelty compared to which colonialism will soon appear as child’s play â€� and in the name of Marx and Stalin, you'll accomplish that conquest for us. For it is our fetishes, our pagan gods, our prejudices, our racism, our nationalism, our poisons that you dream of injecting into the African blood. . . . We’ve never yet dared to do it, but under the name of progress and nationalism, you’ll do the job for us. You’re our most rewarding fifth column. Naturally, we don’t understand this: we’re too stupid. We’re trying to fight you, to destroy you, to prevent you from delivering Africa to us forever.”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“La jeune fille était probablement plus exigeante, plus gourmande que la moyenne. Elle avait déjà deux tentatives de suicide derrière elle. Je me souviens d'elle allongée sur un lit d'hôpital, qui cherchait à fixer un point indéfini sur le mur immaculé pour ne plus entendre les gémissements des autres, pour tromper le temps, les allées et les venues des infirmières au masque dur et impassible, mais qui finissait par se retrouver face à elle-même, qu'était-elle devenue, sinon encore un numéro à qui il fallait administrer ceci et cela.”
― Marceline Loridan-Ivens, L'Amour après