Zhuo Zhang

“As we walked, she asked me about my work. I didn't answer at first, and then I said that in many old paintings, one could discover what was called a pentimento, an earlier layer of something that the artist had chosen to paint over. Sometimes, these were as small as an object, or a color that had been changed, but other times, they could be as significant as a whole figure, an animal, or a piece of furniture. I said that in this way too, writing was just like a painting. It was the only way that one could go back and change the past, to make things not as they were, but as we wished they had been, or rather as we saw it. I said, for this reason, it was better for her not to trust anything she read.”
― Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow

“Grief seemed to constitute a kind of connective membrane, not a divide, and the “fragile film of the present” felt strengthened, not threatened, by the past. Tears, it struck her—even ones that spilled out of your mouth or off a table—formed a fretwork the wingless could learn to walk over, if there had been enough of them and you tried.”
― Laird Hunt, Zorrie

“Anger was such an easy emotion to feel, the refuge of someone who didn't want to work too hard.”
― Nathan Hill, The Nix

“This is how it always is. You have to make these huge decisions on behalf of your kid, this tiny human whose fate and future is entirely in your hands, who trusts you to know what’s good and right and then to be able to make that happen. You never have enough information. You don’t get to see the future. And if you screw up, if with your incomplete, contradictory information you make the wrong call, well, nothing less than your child’s entire future and happiness is at stake. It’s impossible. It’s heartbreaking. It’s maddening. But there’s no alternative.”
― Laurie Frankel, This Is How It Always Is