“If people can’t walk down the streets of Washington D.C. or Denver, Colorado and protest peacefully without being tear-gassed or assaulted by police or unmarked military forces, and put in unidentified vehicles, then we’re halfway towards a police state.”

“I was angry because this was something that was anticipated. This virus was first in China back in December. Italy in January. Our first case in the U.S. was back in February. By mid-March, all fifty states had COVID. We were all hearing and reading about what was quickly unfolding in Italy and I think we could have done better, we could have prepared better, but more importantly, I think our patients deserved better.”

“Opera is not always thought of in the same way as cinema or literature in terms of what representation means, and what it means to posit a future for humanity. But I think that opera very much plays a role in the shaping of a cultural identity.”

“Hope became fiction. You cannot build on anything when you see the amount of destruction.”

“You can ignore history, but it will not ignore you. To some extent what we are seeing unfolding in this extraordinary, concentrated, and dramatic way in this country is a country many of whose people thought they were somehow immune from history and politics and epidemiological disasters.”

On episode 095 of The Quarantine Tapes, Paul Holdengräber is joined by writer Maaza Mengiste.

“It’s really about how [we can] begin to look at this society and talk about what’s valued in it in order to see what’s not valued. Until you can do that, until you can name the things that are valued, you won’t be able to understand the things that aren’t valued.”

“It’s all been sort of turned on its head and it makes me wonder if some of what we’re seeing is performative and it doesn’t have a great deal of muscle behind it. But at the same time, I don’t want to be cynical, I don’t want to think in these terms, because sometimes what ends up happening when you look at history is that you do have a spark. Sometimes there is that matchstick. For some reason a lot of the matchsticks don’t catch, but one of the matches in the matchbook catches. Maybe what we’re seeing is the match finally catching after George Floyd.”

“Personally, I’m only interested in solutions. I’m not interested in the symbols that much. I’m interested in solutions that allow us who are on this planet to live a better life.”

“Some of the best ideas are those that are produced in struggle, in movement. The only way you’re going to be in a movement is because you love life, because you love the people you’re fighting for and with. Sometimes that love--the Agape love, the strong love--is one that does not at all depend on reciprocity.”