Quotes for Friday from Benjamin Kwakye's The Other Crucifix

The elders say that the foreigner never carries the head of the casket. [16]

[H]ome is where you go knowing that no matter what happens to you, no matter what others might think of you, you will be loved. Period. No ifs or buts. This is where he spirit feels most comfortable, most restful and most at ease. [17]

Culture shock? That was to be asked at the end of my stay, for the shock, if any, of being exposed to a new culture isn't to be measured in days or weeks or even months, but by the depth of many years accumulated, tasted, tested, weighted, felt, loved, rejected, hated, accepted. [26]

Here, there was a distance that I couldn't define, and perhaps it was, like air, not definable in its infinite qualities. [32]

My imagined seduction stayed imaginary - mind proposes, reality disposes. [43]

In our earlier days together, the passion was too hot to suffer these gestures, but in the ebbed heat, when lust plateaus, I became vulnerable. [92]

There could be no bridge between the unlinked unless someone built it. But who would lay the first brick of the foundation? Sometimes an extraordinarily farsighted person does. Sometimes, though, the river must overflow, boiling red, before the first brick is laid. [102]

I wanted to know her, make her familiar like the insides of my eyelids. [136]

When it exists, love between husband and wife is intense, but the love between parent and child is indescribable, transcending transcendence itself. [158]

I could reconcile myself to failure, but I couldn't reconcile myself to failing her. [159]