“I speak to these people, and I speak to you because I cannot help it. It gives me strength, almost unbelievable strength, to know that you are there. I covet your eyes, your ears, the collapsible space between us. How blessed are we to have each other? I am alive and you are alive so we must fill the air with our words. I will fill today, tomorrow, every day until I am taken back to God. I will tell stories to people who will listen and to people who don’t want to listen, to people who seek me out and to those who run. All the while I will know that you are there. How can I pretend that you do not exist? It would be almost as impossible as you pretending that I do not exist.”

Source: What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng (2006), Ch. 26, pp. 474-475

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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memoirist, novelist, short story writer, editor, publisher 1970

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