Akshay

“America had begun as a colony and that a colony it remained, that is, a place still defined by its plunder, where enrichment was paramount and civil order always an afterthought.”
― Ayad Akhtar, Homeland Elegies

“Every good story has the same shape. The beginning establishes a goal, the more tangible the better. In the middle we watch the fight toward that goal. The end is what happens when it’s been reached, or when reaching it’s finally failed. What I always say when I teach is: the longer the middle, the better the story. The middle is when we still don’t know the outcome. That’s when we care the most about what’s happening. The longer you can keep the audience engaged in the pursuit without actually resolving that pursuit—that’s real mastery.”
― Ayad Akhtar, Homeland Elegies

“Constantly defining yourself in opposition to what others say about you is not self-knowledge. It’s confusion.”
― Ayad Akhtar, Homeland Elegies

“When the theatricality, the entertainment value, the marketing of life is complete, we will find ourselves living not in a nation but in a consortium of industries, and wholly unintelligible to ourselves except for what we see as through a screen darkly. —Toni Morrison”
― Ayad Akhtar, Homeland Elegies