Aima

“Grief fills the room up of my absent child, Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, Remembers me of all his gracious parts, Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form; Then, have I reason to be fond of grief? Fare you well. Had you such a loss as I, I could give better comfort than you do. I will not keep this form upon my head When there is such disorder in my wit.”
― Yiyun Li, Things in Nature Merely Grow

“Children die, and they are not happy.
And their parents can never know if those children died because they were not happy, or they were not happy because they sensed, too early, that they must face their own deaths.”
― Yiyun Li, Things in Nature Merely Grow

“For six years before Vincent’s death, I had lived with a dread that one day he might choose not to live. There were days of concern and nights of anxiety, and there were occasions for despair, but these feelings, I believed, were better kept under a calm surface. The prospect of a fire does not mean one has to carry an extinguisher on one’s back around the clock.”
― Yiyun Li, Things in Nature Merely Grow

“Many objects outlive people—this thought has often occurred to me when I see in a museum an eighteenth-century pianoforte or a twelfth-century sword or a bowl from 500 BCE. All of Vincent’s belongings and all of James’s belongings have outlived them; not a single item has left our care. There are Vincent’s many paintings hung around the house. There is James’s collection of pocket watches on a shelf. Everywhere I turn in the house there are objects: their meanings reside in the memories connected to them; the memories limn the voids, which cannot be filled by the objects.”
― Yiyun Li, Things in Nature Merely Grow