Aster

“I listen to the clock striking out each determined tick. If only I could rewind, go back in time and ask my mother every question about every tiny thing. How crucial those little fragments are now; how great their absence. I should have saved them up, gathering them like drops of water in a desert. I'd always counted on having an oasis.”
― Emily X.R. Pan, The Astonishing Color of After

“Home always shrinks in times of absence, always bleeds away some of its majesty, because what is home, after all, apart from the place one returns to when the adventure is over? Home is an end to glory, a stopping point when the tale is done.”
― Seanan McGuire, In an Absent Dream

“最難風雨故人來 [...] it’s an incredible blessing to be able to see your loved ones during the most difficult times.”
― Emily X.R. Pan, The Astonishing Color of After

“She did not tell them to clean up their lives, or go and sin no more. She did not tell them they were the blessed of the earth, its inheriting meek, or its glory-bound pure. She told them that the only grace they could have is the grace they could imagine. That if they could not see it, they could not have it.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved