Dyah Sarasvati

“I am writing because they told me to never start a sentence with because. But I wasn't trying to make a sentence—I was trying to break free. Because freedom, I am told, is nothing but the distance between the hunter and its prey.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“All freedom is relative—you know too well—and sometimes it’s no freedom at all, but simply the cage widening far away from you, the bars abstracted with distance but still there, as when they “free” wild animals into nature preserves only to contain them yet again by larger borders. But I took it anyway, that widening. Because sometimes not seeing the bars is enough”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“Too much joy, I swear, is lost in our desperation to keep it.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous