Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [850]

“It’s not that bad. Farther north, we can get work.” … “Maybe. But people have been flooding north for years. Jobs are scarce up there, too. And statelines and borders are closed.” — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 850

Note

A compressed argument in four sentences, where the counter-optimism is answerable only by ever-narrowing factual clauses — ‘Jobs are scarce,’ then the short hard stop of ‘And statelines and borders are closed.’ The passage is worth keeping for how the exchange’s economy makes hope and foreclosure sound almost the same length, so the argument feels decided by the world rather than by either speaker.