The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, Phillip Jenkins

"Christianity has never been synonymous with either Europe or the West."

~from The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, Phillip Jenkins

Good Hair, Benilde Little

"'First of all,' she said with her back to me and sounding like God, 'you are not havin' a breakdown. We don't break down. We may make other people do that, but we don't, so you cannot have one. That woman I worked for, she has breakdowns, which is why she calls me every damn day, 'cause she can't figure out nothin' for herself and she's been given everything her whole life. You, my little girlfriend, come from folks so damn strong-willed that they had to leave the South or White folks was just gon' be forced to kill 'em. You couldn't have no will like that and be a Black man in the South, you understand that. Now, I don't know all of what's bothering you, I do know you can figure out how to get what you want from that paper, and if they can't give it to you, then you go look for somethin' else, and when you find it, then you leave, but you don't just git up and go without someplace else to go.'"

~from Good Hair, Benilde Little

A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving

"It's a no-win argument--that business of what we're born with and what our environment does to us. And it's a boring argument, because it simplifies the mysteries that attend both our birth and our growth." ~A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving

Beyond The Shadows, Brent Weeks

"'Shit,' Kylar said. 'How come everyone I know is smarter than me? Whatever it is, I see the unclean. I want to know if that implies that I have a duty to do something about what I see.'"

~~Beyond the Shadows, Brent Weeks

The Haunting of Hip-Hop, Bertice Berry

It would take Freedom his entire life to realize that too often childhood wishes become the motivation for the misbehavior of adults.
~The Haunting of Hip Hop, Bertice Berry

please don't come back from the moon, Dean Bakopoulos

When I was sixteen, my father went to the moon.  He was not the first man from Maple Rock to go there; he only followed the others on what seemed to be an inevitable trail.
~please don't come back from the moon, Dean Bakopoulos.

The End of Poverty, Jeffrey D. Sachs

"Alas, the international community's approach remains incoherent in practice. On the one side, it announces bold goals, like the Millennium Development Goals, and even ways that the goals can be achieved, such as the pledge of increased donor assistance made in the Monterrey Consensus. Yet when it comes to real practice, where the rubber hits the road, in the poverty reduction plans, the Millennium Development Goals are expressed only as vague aspirations rather than operational targets. Countries are told to go about their business without any hope of meeting the MDGs. The IMF and World Bank reveal split personalities, championind the MDGs in public speeches, approving programs that will not achieve them, and privately acknowledging, with business as usual, that they cannot be met!"
~The End of Poverty, Jeffrey D. Sachs