Assembly Quotes

“Be the best. Work harder, work smarter. Exceed every expectation. But also, be invisible, imperceptible. Don’t make anyone uncomfortable. Don’t inconvenience. Exist in the negative only, the space around. Do not insert yourself into the main narrative. Go unnoticed. Become the air. Open your eyes.”
― Natasha Brown, Assembly

“But it's there. Dread. Every day is an opportunity to fuck up. Every decision, every meeting, every report. There's no success, only the temporary aversion of failure. Dread. From the buzz and jingle of my alarm until I finally get back to sleep. Dread.”
― Natasha Brown, Assembly

“I feel. Of course I do. I have emotions. But I try to consider events as if they're happening to someone else. Some other entity. There's the thinking, rationalizing I (me). And the doing, the experiencing, her. I look at her kindly. From a distance. To protect myself, I detach.”
― Natasha Brown, Assembly

“How do we examine the legacy of colonization when the basic facts of its construction are disputed in the minds of its beneficiaries? Even that which wasn’t burnt in the 60s – by British officials during the government-sanctioned frenzy of mass document destruction. Operation Legacy, to spare the Queen embarrassment. The more insidious act, though less sensational, proved to have the greatest impact: a deliberate exclusion and obfuscation within the country’s national curriculum. Through this, more than records were destroyed. The erasure itself was erased.”
― Natasha Brown, Assembly

“But it’s there. Dread. Every day is an opportunity to fuck up. Every decision, every meeting, every report. There’s no success, only the temporary aversion of failure. Dread.”
― Natasha Brown, Assembly

“How do we examine the legacy of colonization when the basic facts of its construction are disputed in the minds of its beneficiaries?”
― Natasha Brown, Assembly

“I’m unsure about this weekend. It seemed fine, even enjoyable, when proposed. Months away, abstract. But here it is, now, and here I am, too. And this train – very real, very concrete and travelling fast – is tearing us together. Close your eyes.”
― Natasha Brown, Assembly

“To protect myself, I detach.”
― Natasha Brown, Assembly

“Be the best. Work harder, work smarter. Exceed every expectation. But also, be invisible, imperceptible. Don't make anyone uncomfortable. Don't inconvenience. Exist in the negative only, the space around. Do not insert yourself into the main narrative. Go unnoticed. Become the air. Open your eyes.”
― Natasha Brown, Assembly

“Generations of sacrifice; hard work and harder living. So much suffered, so much forfeited, so much -- for this opportunity. For my life. And I've tried, tried living up to it. But after years of struggling, fighting against the current, I'm ready to slow my arms. Stop kicking. Breathe the water in. I'm exhausted. Perhaps it’s time to end this story. Ah - here’s Lou.”
― Natasha Brown, Assembly

“I don't want to be a part of it. I want to grab at it, grab its face and pull open its mouth, prise its jaws apart and reach down, in, deeper. Touch what's inside.”
― Natasha Brown, Assembly

“The answer: assimilation. Always, the pressure is there. Assimilate, assimilate. Dissolve yourself into the melting pot. And then flow out, pour into the mould. Bend your bones until they splinter and crack and you fit. Force yourself into their form. Assimilate, they say it, encouraging. Then frowning. Then again and again. And always there, quiet, beneath the urging language of tolerance and cohesion - disappear!”
― Natasha Brown, Assembly

“But what it takes to get there isn’t what you need once you've arrived. A difficult realization, and a harder actualization.”
― Natasha Brown, Assembly

“I am not sure why I do anything, sometimes. Why do I inhale? Why do I apologize? Or say I'm fine, thanks. And you? Why do I stand back from the platform edge?”
― Natasha Brown, Assembly

“But what it takes to get there isn’t what you need once you’ve arrived.”
― Natasha Brown, Assembly

“But it's there. Dread. Every day is an opportunity to fuck up. Every decision, every meeting, every report. There's no success, only the temporary aversion of failure. Dread. From the buzz and jingle of my alarm until I finally get back to sleep. Dread. Weighing cold in my gut, winding up around my oesophagus, seizing my throat. Dread. I lie stretched out on the couch or on my bed or just supine on the floor. Dread. I repeat the day over, interrogate it for errors or missteps or – anything. Dread, dread, dread, dread. Anything at all could be the thing that fucks everything up. I know it. That truth reverberates in my chest, a thumping bass line. Dread, dread, it's choking me. Dread.
I don't remember when I didn't feel this.”
― Natasha Brown, Assembly

“How many women and girls have I lied to? How many have seen my grinning face advocating for this or that firm, or this industry, or that university, this life?”
― Natasha Brown, Assembly

“you keep your pace. Left foot, then right.
Keep your head down, keep going. There is no back, or even forwards; realize this. There's only through it, endlessly, treading it. This hostile environment. This hostile life.”
― Natasha Brown, Assembly

“It's evident now, obvious in retrospect as the proof of root-two's irrationality, that these world superpowers are neither infallible, nor superior. They're nothing, not without a brutally enforced relativity. An organized, systematic brutality that their soft and sagging children can scarcely stomach - won't even acknowledge. Yet cling to as truth. There was never any absolute, no decree from God. Just viscous, random chance. And then, compounding.”
― Natasha Brown, Assembly

“Explain air. Convince a sceptic. Prove it's there. Prove what cant be seen.”
― Natasha Brown, Assembly

“I traded in my life for a sliver of middle-class comfort. For a future.”
― Natasha Brown, Assembly

“These directives: listen, be quiet, do this, don’t do that. When does it end? And where has it got me? More, and more of the same. I am everything they told me to become. Not enough. A physical destruction, now, to match the mental. Dissect, poison, destroy this new malignant part of me. But there’s always something else: the next demand, the next criticism. This endless complying, attaining, exceeding – why?”
― Natasha Brown, Assembly

“There’s a stink to it. So many men talking and sweating and burping and coughing and existing – packed in sleeve to sleeve.”
― Natasha Brown, Assembly

“He introduces me to his political friends from across the spectrum. Conservatives who oo and ah and nod, telling me I'm just what this country is about. And so articulate! Frowning liberals who put it simply: my immoral career is counterproductive to my own community. Can I see that? My primary issue is poverty, not race. Their earnest faces tilt to assess my comprehension, my understanding of my role in this society. They conjure metaphors of boats and tides and rising waves of fairness. Not reparations -no, even socialism doesn't stretch that far. Though some do propose a rather capitalistic trickle-down from Britain to her lagging Commonwealth friends. Through economic generosity: trade and strong relations! Global leadership. The centrists nod. The son nods, too. Now that, they can all agree to.”
― Natasha Brown, Assembly

“Transcends race, they say of exceptional, dead black people. As if that relentless overcoming, when taken to the limit, as time stretches on to infinity, itself overcomes even limits, even infinity, even this place.”
― Natasha Brown, Assembly

“She was a Home Counties, Kate-loving, Jaeger-shopping, Lean In-feminist who arranged animal-welfare fundraisers at the weekends and bought handmade earrings from Etsy.”
― Natasha Brown, Assembly

“Back at the office, Lou’s not in yet. He rarely shows up before eleven. As if each morning, fresh mediocrity slides out of the ocean, slimes its way over mossy rocks and sand, then sprouts skittering appendages that stretch and morph and twist into limbs as it forges on inland until finally, fully formed, Lou! Strolls into the lobby on two flat feet in shined shoes. Shining, tapping, waiting for the lift to our floor.”
― Natasha Brown, Assembly

“The floor, the tight-packed rows of suited men, operates with a lurching autonomy. Even after weeks without strategic direction from this glass box. The men are laughing, breathing, talking in twos or threes, gathered around a screen. Or standing, chests puffed, and pointing. Punctuated by an occasional woman. Some crouch down, their noses in plastic trays of early dinner or late lunch. There’s a stink to it. So many men talking and sweating and burping and coughing and existing – packed in sleeve to sleeve. Dry, weathered faces; soft, flabby cheeks; grease-shined foreheads. Necks bursting from as-yet-unbuttoned collars. All shades of pink, beige, tan. Fingers stabbing at keyboards and meaty fists wrapped around phone receivers. Or handsfree, gesturing and talking into slender headsets while tossing and catching a ball or pen.

Is this it – the crescendo of my career?”
― Natasha Brown, Assembly

“Why subject myself to their reductive gaze? To this crushing objecthood. Why endure my own dehumanization?”
― Natasha Brown, Assembly

“Because they watch (us). They're taught how to, from school. They are taught to view our bodies (selves) as objects.”
― Natasha Brown, Assembly