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“When I wake in the morning, I wake in pain. When I sit at my desk, when I drink red wine, when I laugh, when he lifts my shirt over my head and pulls me to bed, all of it filters through pain” (38).

“When the pain began, I was a second-year graduate student studying stories. Theology, specifically. Because we tell ourselves stories in order to live, remember? Because we desperately want it all to mean something, don’t we? […]

“For the briefest of moments, the man in the orange jumpsuit and I share a common vulnerability: our compromised mobility forces us to rely on the knowledge, compassion, and skill of other people. I am at the same time, relieved and ashamed of my relief as his bed is wheeled away. […]

“I should tell you now, this is a story that doesn’t end well” (11).

“Or maybe it’s better to say that this is a story that doesn’t end how you think it will” (12).

“Or maybe I should just tell you it is exactly like this: this is a story that doesn’t end” (13).

“What does dying feel like? Does it feel like being absorbed by your own body?

I sat still, accounting for each breath, insecure yet somehow cognizant that each passing moment was ferrying me away from that elusive physical sensation so often defined by only its absence: normal.

This was no ordinary headache. This is a call demanding response” (9).

“Lawrence was smiling, but there was a guardedness in his eyes, an opaqueness that made me wonder how funny he found his own joke. It was strange, to feel uncertain like this with him. Truly, he had never seemed all complicated before. Then again, I realized, I had never invested anything complicated in him until now” (177-78 Cleave).

“We went on holding hands, saying nothing. I looked out the window and saw the wide, transparent, cloudless sky outside.
Below, the forest was a lush, intense green, the rivers like snakes twisting through it.
A wild and vivid beauty to feed the eyes and the soul” (247).

“We went on holding hands, saying nothing. I looked out the window and saw the wide, transparent, cloudless sky outside.
Below, the forest was a lush, intense green, the rivers like snakes twisting through it.
A wild and vivid beauty to feed the eyes and the soul” (247).

“She placed her head on my shoulder and I breathed in her light, sweet perfume and stroked her gray hair. It felt like an epiphany: from now on, our roles were reversed. I would do more of the mothering, and she would be more of a daughter” (247).

“Every night she shuts the windows tight to guard against drafts, and every morning he dies and is reborn beside her. She reminds his heart to beat again, as she did so long ago. He kisses her fingers, and combs her hair, and he treasures her, as only a man who has lost his luck and found it once more ever can.”

I’ve fallen and I can’t get up ;-;

“She [Hex] turned and glared at the knights on either side of her, each twice her age, and they scooted over to make room. We sat” (236 Killjoy).

rare Hex w

Wray Ordway said mildly, “Nika, if that man sleeps in the guest house tonight, I’ll lose all faith in you.”

Nikanja’s body went helplessly smooth, and everyone laughed.

[…]

“You people are not nice,” she said, keeping her smile. “You should be ashamed. Go home now, all of you. Have interesting dreams.” (35 Butler).

I giggled🤭

“Your children will know us, Lilith. You never will” (125 Butler).

CHILLS

props to Lilith for not going insane yet

books I’m insane about

“So today we remembered the friends and family members we’ve lost. We spoke our individual memories and quoted Bible passages, Earthseed verses, and bits of songs and poems that were favorites of the living or the dead.

Then we buried our dead and we planted oak trees” (311).

“The Self must create
Its own reason for being
To shape God,
Shape Self.”

Earthseed: The Books of the Living

“I was not a girl who could ask for things. I was not powder and perfume and lace-trimmed fans. The kind of woman who could wheedle favors from wealthy men wore dresses in the purples and deep pinks of cactus fruit. They wore silk and velvet ribbons tied as necklaces. The owner of blue agave farm sent them sapphire and wild rings. They were not girls in plain huipils” (p. 15).

“Don’t look back,” she says. Distinctly. Her eyes lose focus, as though she’s peering with difficulty through the disordered drifts of memory into another time and place. Her lips are still moving, but she has run out of words. It doesn’t matter. There is no mistaking her meaning. (p. 359)

SCREAMMMMM

“We will not be gods, you or I. We will not look into that mirror. Instead, for those last few days you have left, you are mortal at last.” (p. 405)

AHHHHHHHHHHH

“In 1959 the first personal computer - rather optimistically dubbed the future machine by an inventor, so dazzled with his own brilliance - he couldn’t think of anything better, was on sale. It was the size of small wardrobe and had a life of approximately four months before the internal parts melted under the strain, but it was nevertheless a sign of things to come.” (p. 322)

“What would this conversation have been like, I wondered, if I was only eighteen years old? Now, in my eight hundred and forty-ninth year, it was almost funny. I informed her I would consider my position most carefully. She sniffed some empty words in reply and dismissed me with a wave. I made it to the end of the corridor before I burst out laughing.” (p. 314)

“I had never seen the twenty-first century before. I wasn’t particular impressed by the medicine, even less so by the politics […].” (p. 310)

“It was a reminder of the old truth that for tyranny to flourish all it required was the complicity of good men.” (p. 288)

Started reading this a hot second ago but forgot to update when🫡🫡

“Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I’d forget everything that had happened. I’d go down the hall, and for a moment, we’d just moved in again. The girls were asleep in their tent in the living room” (p. 227).

oh I’m gonna be fucking ill