Nabila Tabassum Chowdhury > Recent Status Updates

"He felt his body divide itself into a hotness and a coldness, a softness and a hardness, a trembling and a not trembling, the two halves grinding one upon the other.”

""What do you do, go around trying everything once?" he asked. "Sometimes twice." She looked at something in her hand."

+;"One, two, three, one, two, three! Rain. The storm. The uncle laughing. Thunder falling downstairs. The whole world pouring down. The fire gushing up in a volcano. All rushing on down around in a spouting roar and rivering stream toward morning."

"One drop of rain. Clarisse. Another drop. Mildred. A third. The uncle. A fourth. The fire tonight. One, Clarisse. Two, Mildred. Three, uncle. Four, fire, One, Mildred, two, Clarisse. One, two, three, four, five, Clarisse, Mildred, uncle, fire, sleeping- tablets, men, disposable tissue, coat- tails, blow, wad, flush, Clarisse, Mildred, uncle, fire, tablets, tissues, blow, wad, flush."+

"If only they could have taken her mind along to the dry- cleaner's and emptied the pockets and steamed and cleansed it and reblocked it and brought it back in the morning. If only..."

"There are billions of us and that's too many. Nobody knows anyone. Strangers come and violate you. Strangers come and cut your heart out. Strangers come and take your blood."

"He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask and there was no way of going to knock on her door and ask for it back."

"People were more often-he searched for a simile, found one in his work- torches, blazing away until they whiffed out. How rarely did other people's faces take of you and throw back to you your own expression, your own innermost trembling thought?"

""I sometimes think drivers don't know what grass is, or flowers, because they never see them slowly," she said."

"It is impossible not to reflect, and to try to make you, dear reader, understand, that every generation of my family in living memory has been shaped or defined by imperial war."

"“You’re good at your craft, John. But people aren’t blocks of wood for you to turn to your liking, and you’ve not quite learned that yet, in your bones.”"

"“Steal from a woman long enough, and a witch is what she’ll become.”"

"A witch is a kind of justice in the world. It makes for a fine story."

"He found he was less ashamed about it with the witch, though; perhaps because she wore her own ugliness so brazenly, he didn’t so much mind his own."

"There is grammar that is ruled like a kingdom, and grammar that is ruled like a composition book, and there is always, always the wild, unruly grammar of ballads and riddles, and this is the grammar of Arcadia, which breaks the real into the true."

+"You rock together, forward and back; your left hand keeps a base rhythm while your right weaves a melody through it, and they flutter past each other as the music becomes more complex, swells, breaks, shakes the body of your instrument in joy and grief alike, in the wild, wonderful grammar of being alive."

"Most music is the result of some intimacy with an instrument. One wraps one’s mouth around a whistle and pours one’s breath into it; one all but lays one’s cheek against a violin; and skin to skin is holy drummer’s kiss. But a harp is played most like a lover: you learn to lean its body against your breast, find those places of deepest, stiffest tension with your hands and finger them into quivering release."

"Transformation implies movement, but things can move without being transformed.”"

"No, it’s— more that I want… something I don’t know. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want what I do know, and you’re what I know best, Bel.”"

"You were not wholly wrong; any part of Arcadia we glimpse in this tale becomes less Arcadia the longer we look at it, and so in deference to our story’s geopolitics, we shall not be staying long."

"the one I wanted had said no to me, I’d have nursed a broken heart, not whined at them like a puppy until they petted me!”"

"“The cherry that’s baked in a pie, for instance, has no stone. The chicken that’s stewed in a pot, it has no bone. The song says, this thing you are used to, it has a future, and the future is part of it, too.”"

"How is a cherry not a cherry? Well, when it’s a flower. How is a chicken not a chicken? Well, when it’s an egg. The song says, this thing you are used to, it has a past, and that past is part of it; what the cherry was before the cherry is part of the cherry."

"Healing doesn’t come from platitudes or one-size-fits-all interventions. It comes from genuine, empathetic listening and a willingness to sit with discomfort."

"I let myself believe that whatever had happened in the woods was something therapists could address and, yes, repair. That her surviving family members and scores of others involved in her care had banded together to help her heal. That Shasta Groene was like Jaycee Dugard or even Elizabeth Smart. That her rescue was the end of a nightmare—not the middle of one. Stupid me."

"Like water seeping through the tiniest crack, drama and chaos find ways inside her life."

"She knew girls who’d had experienced abuse, and thought, well, maybe it was just part of being a girl."

"When you look at her today—past the tattoos that both honor those Shasta loved and eulogize others who abandoned her either in death or incarceration or simply because the relationship was never going to last as long as ink under human skin—there is that little girl still searching for the way back home, back to her family."

"Clearly, the justice system was out of whack. Shasta felt that way for a long, long time. It had been set up to serve the needs of the offender. Its snail’s pace prolonged the agony of those who had done no harm, those who had been victimized. Closure? Swift? Decisive? All of that, Shasta knew, was a big fat joke."

"Jet had been on death row. He had fought his death sentence with endless appeals. And, in his own way, by dying of cancer, Jet had cheated the executioner."