Kim

“Language, I’m told, is built
to choose sides. What is meant:
the tool we believe connects us
maintains the divide. What I hear:
be careful of silence, what it holds,
how a word can take over your life.”
― Omar Sakr, Non-Essential Work

“What remained was either silence or lies. Such as: the convicts and their children had all fled to the mainland during the gold rushes. Such as: the Tasmanian Aboriginal people were extinct, long gone, not one left on the island. Such as: everyone was descended from free settlers, not a touch of the tar brush or the convict stain on any of us.”
― Richard Flanagan, Question 7

“It seems very American to expect grief to change something. Like a token you cash in. A formula. Grieve x amount, receive y amount of comfort. Work a day in the grief mines and get paid in tickets to the company store.”
― Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!

“Though I tried to be honest, it was still happening and so it was dishonest. That’s what I couldn’t see then that I see now, that though it happened then it’s still happening now and it won’t ever stop happening, and that writing about it, that writing about anything, can’t be an opinion about what happened as if it had already happened when it is still happening, still unintelligible, still mysterious, and all writing is trapped in tenses when life isn’t.”
― Richard Flanagan, Question 7