How to Live Free in a Dangerous World Quotes

“It's the people who've never had to survive who make fun out of the act of survival.”
― Shayla Lawson, How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir

“In the culture we live in, intimacies are abundant but intimacy is scarce. Sex, social contact, information. It's easy for us to get what we want, but not want what we need - to be close to each other.”
― Shayla Lawson, How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir

“Intimacy is not about the fact that we need each other. The separations in how we feel are an illusion. The separations in who we are, are a myth. We are each other. And until we're willing to draw close to one another, art is a refuge for me because it helps me see all those places where we overlap.”
― Shayla Lawson, How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir

“Freedom is traveling but liberation is food. No matter where you are, may you always be certain who you are. And when you are, get everything you deserve.”
― Shayla Lawson, How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir

“From birth, our health is the pursuit of two questions: "What will cause us to die?" and "Who determines how we live?" In between those two questions is our lives, us pretending to be free.”
― Shayla Lawson, How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir

“Everyone living is dying. And because I am dying, I desire pleasure as proof that I have lived.”
― Shayla Lawson, How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir

“Isabel Allende said, "The best aphrodisiacs are words, the g-spot is in the ears," and for years, I was giddy for sweet talking.”
― Shayla Lawson, How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir

“Knowing what you are worth makes you look at the world differently.”
― Shayla Lawson, How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir

“Humanity is meant to scar us, something ugly must befall us in order for us to say we've truly lived.”
― Shayla Lawson, How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir

“Beauty can be copied but not preserved.”
― Shayla Lawson, How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir

“I don't worry about living in a way where I will be remembered. How do I want to live?”
― Shayla Lawson, How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir

“The whims of the technologically rich weighed against the freedom of the economically poor, and this dynamic continues today.”
― Shayla Lawson, How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir

“The gap between the 1 percent and the rest of us is a rising elevator, and Shanghai is a trip straight up.”
― Shayla Lawson, How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir

“There is power in the people who show up in the comments and not the pictures. In the people who are the "virus" that makes viral content.”
― Shayla Lawson, How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir

“But because the power of "whiteness" is based on exclusion (who I think you aren't) and not inclusion (all the things I believe you can be, and will be, and have to teach me), it's not real solidarity. It doesn't travel well.”
― Shayla Lawson, How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir

“I questioned whether one old woman determining her death was right. We treat death as unnatural in America because we believe we hold power over it, when in reality, it is as constant as laughter, and love, and reading the newspaper, and - every now and then - an old woman folds her periodical across her lap and decides today is her last day to read it.”
― Shayla Lawson, How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir

“I believe not growing up with that same sense of war gives Americans a disadvantage on dying. Worldwide, we cause chaos, but we don't partake of it ourselves. We view death as something unnatural and yet somewhere, we are bombing mothers and children.”
― Shayla Lawson, How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir

“This for me is why I can no longer call myself a Christian. I've been tethered to and exhausted by it too many times, by a white man trying to craft himself in God's image. I've given up on worshipping anyone who can't imagine a world with me in it.”
― Shayla Lawson, How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir

“The village was beautiful but boring, the way beautiful things often become - better in nostalgia than in the present.”
― Shayla Lawson, How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir

“The phrase "This is Africa" was welcome invitation into survival. "This is America" was a phrase I only heard bolstering the bonfire of how backward we'd become.”
― Shayla Lawson, How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir

“Because of the internet, we are all always simultaneously invisible and being surveilled.”
― Shayla Lawson, How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir