Killing is like riding, you see, one never really loses the knack.
--
Erik (p. 431)Susan Kay
The wind was a torrent of darkness upon the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight looping the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding —
Riding — riding —
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn door.Alfred Noyes
So think about the poor slave who could read, but was scared to teach their kids to read for fear they would be killing their kids. Think about the poor slave that rode to town every week. Think about the poor slave who rode the buggy to town every week. Riding the buggy … riding the buggy, and he could read, and is riding the buggy and he's riding the buggy. And up ahead he sees a busy intersection, and is riding the buggy and he's riding the buggy. Then he sees a STOP sign … Now he's in a big dilemma. "If I go through this intersection, I'm a have a accident. If I stop, these crackers will kill me." And he's riding the buggy, and in the last minute he says "f**k it", goes through the intersection, has a big ol' accident. Almost kills somebody. Then the police come: "Nigga, what is wrong with you? Nigga, what the f**k is wrong with you? You could have killed somebody, nigga. Didn't see that stop sign?" "Oh, I don't know what you talking about." "You didn't see that stop sign, that stop sign back there?" "Oh, you mean that octagon thing." "Nigga, who taught you octagon?"
Chris Rock
The Shaka story … has a Faustian quality. A tale of temptation, it asks what price a person is willing to pay, how far he is willing to go, to obtain power. In revealing Shaka's heart of darkness, it reveals the dangerous consequences of closing a pact with the devil: hubris, violence, death. And it warns of the presence of these destructive forces in all of us. Shaka is himself in this story, but he also represents the darker, shadow side of humankind generally. We see ourselves when we watch him become so obsessed by power that he sacrifices human relationships for what the devil (in the person of malevolent diviners and witchdoctors) can offer him, and when he loses the ability to distinguish between killing for a just cause and wanton killing for killing's sake. The ending is predictable, surely: loneliness and despair. Shaka ends up on a throne of blood, isolated from his fellow human beings, struggling with depression and despondency.
Shaka Zulu
A cleric who loses his faith abandons his calling; a philosopher who loses his redefines his subject.
Ernest Gellner
It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and can coast down them. ... Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motorcar only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.
Ernest Hemingway
Kay, Susan
Kaye, Danny
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