Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [2144]

“Everyone’s tired and everyone’s hurting,” I told him. “Everyone, not just you. But we’ve managed to keep ourselves alive by working together and by not doing or saying stupid things.” … “And if that’s not good enough for you,” Bankole added, in a voice low and ugly with anger, “tomorrow you can go out and find yourself a different kind of group to travel with—a group too goddamn macho to waste its time saving your child’s life twice in one day.” — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 2144

Note

Two registers of the same discipline: Lauren’s flat, repeated ‘everyone’ levels the room, then Bankole’s ‘low and ugly’ anger does the wounding arithmetic — ‘twice in one day.’ The gentleness and the blade are adjacent, and the passage measures the distance between them.