Jo

“We need not worry, our leaders tell us. We are a resilient people. We need only summon that strength now. Will someone please tell them that resilience is not a thing to be trotted out in trying times like a kind of prized pony? As the gifted Haitian American writer Edwidge Danticat puts it, just because people are resilient doesn't mean they can suffer more than others.”
― Julian Aguon, No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies: A Lyric Essay

“Also, my sister was going to have another child and while I think babies are fine in the abstract, my sister has a regrettable belief that if I just hold one long enough, I will come to enjoy it. I will not. I have proven this to my own satisfaction, but apparently not to hers, and America seemed like an excellent alternative. Land of opportunity, they say, which presumably includes the opportunity not to hold a baby.”
― T. Kingfisher, What Stalks the Deep

“How many damn books have you actually read?”
“Not nearly enough,” he smiles.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Friends

“Violence isn’t the only means of Transformation, Aerius. There are other Ways Back. A book is an Ax too. ‘For the frozen Sea within us.’ ‘The Pen is mightier than the Sword,’ and so on.”
And in my Mindscape, I saw my Book. Now in Mother’s Hands. How she’d hugged it so close to her Body even after she’d called it Nothing, a Fiction. “My Book a Way Back,” I whispered. “All by itself?” My Voice echoed in the Forest, small and alone.
Allan looked down at me, suddenly quite enchanted. “All by itself," he repeated softly. “They are one of the oldest forms of Transformative Magic. They have the Power to change Everything. Hearts. Bodies. Minds. Souls. Whole fucking Worlds. People burn them for a Reason, you know.”
― Mona Awad, We Love You, Bunny