This choice sentence from an article by Hilton Als in the New Yorker on the South African playwright Athol Fugard (why has he never won a Nobel?):
Language not as a tool of self-definition--who am I, and what can I be to you?--but as an instrument for categorizing others, and thus shaping them for one's use.
On another note, the essay opened powerfully. I wish I could write an opening sentence as good as this one:
The two men look as though they'd crawled out from under a rock into a landscape of broken glass and shit.
Saying it out loud is even more fun. The sounds of the words have evocative appeal.
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