Chae Gwillim

“Members of his crew knew dialects from further up the African coast, but they had never heard words like those spoken by these river people. Cao heard the name Kongo being repeated. Following the pattern of other African groups, they explained they were the BaKongo people and called their language KiKongo. Inland, they said, was the capital of their tribe, MbanzaKongo, where there lived a powerful leader or king, the ManiKongo.”
― Tim Butcher, Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart

“Then at night, we could hardly sleep. This”
― Fred Gipson, Old Yeller

“I think I have a very good idea why it is that anti-Semitism is so tenacious and so protean and so enduring. Christianity and Islam, theistic though they may claim to be, are both based on the fetishizing of human primates: Jesus in one case and Mohammed in the other. Neither of these figures can be called exactly historical but both have one thing in common even in their quasi-mythical dimension. Both of them were first encountered by the Jews. And the Jews, ravenous as they were for any sign of the long-sought Messiah, were not taken in by either of these two pretenders, or not in large numbers or not for long.

If you meet a devout Christian or a believing Muslim, you are meeting someone who would give everything he owned for a personal, face-to-face meeting with the blessed founder or prophet. But in the visage of the Jew, such ardent believers encounter the very figure who did have such a precious moment, and who spurned the opportunity and turned shrugging aside. Do you imagine for a microsecond that such a vile, churlish transgression will ever be forgiven? I myself certainly hope that it will not. The Jews have seen through Jesus and Mohammed. In retrospect, many of them have also seen through the mythical, primitive, and cruel figures of Abraham and Moses. Nearer to our own time, in the bitter combats over the work of Marx and Freud and Einstein, Jewish participants and protagonists have not been the least noticeable. May this always be the case, whenever any human primate sets up, or is set up by others, as a Messiah.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“Bein' born is craps," he decided. He glanced at Morg and let loose that sly, lopsided smile of his. "How we live is poker.”
― Mary Doria Russell, Doc