Dionne Brand Quotes

Books leave gestures in the body; a certain way of moving, of turning, a certain closing of the eyes, a way of leaving, hesitations. Books leave certain sounds, a certain pacing; mostly they leave the elusive, which is all the story. They leave much more than the words.

If I see someone I see the ghost of them, the air around them, and where they’ve been. If I see a city I see it’s living ghostliness—the stray looks, the dying hands. I see it’s needs and its discomforts locked in apartments.

Fashions are not fashions at all but refashioning; language is not communication but reinvention. They are never in place but on display.

I felt the unordinary romance of / women who love women for the first time.

People here believe in uncontrollable passion, in mad rages, and in the brusque inevitability of death.

Cities collect people, stray and lost and deliberate arrivants.