The Perishing Quotes

“when you can recognize a pattern, you can change an outcome. Change a pattern in your own life, you change your whole life. But I tell you the truth, the only pattern worth repeating is kindness.”
― Natashia Deón, The Perishing

“Others will call your joy a fiction or call you a liar or immoral or dangerous for your happiness, but their conclusions are only a reflection of their limited imaginations, their own abilities, their being stuck in their lives. It’s not a rewrite of yours.”
― Natashia Deón, The Perishing

“You can know how many seeds are in an apple. But you cannot know how many apples are in a seed.”
― Natashia Deón, The Perishing

“I’ve learned you can’t wait for other people’s permission to accept your own blessed life. Your life is magical in whatever way it is. Accept it and be glad in it, despite other people. It’ll be over soon. For most of you. Others will call your joy a fiction or call you a liar or immoral or dangerous for your happiness, but their conclusions are only a reflection of their limited imaginations, their own abilities, their being stuck in their lives. It’s not a rewrite of yours.”
― Natashia Deón, The Perishing

“We cope with stories we tell ourselves about the lost thing and those involved, and these stories include lies like “I never wanted it anyway.” We lie about what we really wanted because we don’t want to feel rejected—a form of abandonment. Makes us feel abandoned. But not asking for what we want is worse. Self-abandonment. And when we agree to relationships and situations we don’t want because we can’t bear to be alone or don’t have the courage to ask, we become a victim of that not-asked-for thing, grieving for ourselves. But the truth is, you abandoned yourself way back there. You can choose differently.”
― Natashia Deón, The Perishing

“Every mortal human being is only temporarily abled, is only temporarily without an ailment. If you live long enough, you’ll see. So I don’t want to be like those who can’t yet find themselves in others. That some stranger’s life was just a birthday cake that fell on the floor. I have to remember our humanity”
― Natashia Deón, The Perishing

“The past doesn’t matter,” he says. “The past is the past whether it was good or not. Because if it was good, then you know it can be good again. If it was bad, you can change who you are and show people that it doesn’t always have to be bad. That’s all the past is good for.”
― Natashia Deón, The Perishing

“Sadness can be the hardest thing to let go of when there are no visible scars. Scars are the only proof a person has to show that something went terribly wrong.”
― Natashia Deón, The Perishing

“So before the bus left, before Sammy's week was up, Sammy and Billy snuck into the church building, sat in the pews, and ate a mess of pineapple and peach and butter and nuts with some mint, all dumped and baked into cake batter. The end result was the distinctive flavor of strawberries. Proof that dump cake is life. No matter what you put in it, no matter what you try, how you're received is not always up to you.”
― Natashia Deón, The Perishing

“I’ve learned you can’t wait for other people’s permission to accept your own blessed life. Your life is magical in whatever way it is. Accept it and be glad in it, despite other people. It’ll be over soon. For most of you. Others will call your joy a fiction or call you a liar or immoral or dangerous for your happiness, but their conclusions are only a reflection of their limited imaginations, their own abilities, their being stuck in their lives. It’s not a rewrite of yours. At worse, their wrong conclusions and attacks are because you threw your pearls to pigs. Throw them anyway. Throw them if they can help somebody else who’s losing hope and being slain, boxed, and labeled by the Limited. Because when you live a life filled with experiences that are true for you and are you or are you now but are beyond other people’s experiences, beyond their boundaries, morals, or courage, even if you’re poor, even when you’re poor, you’ll be first feared. Maybe always. And for this, the Limited can become vicious. Not just to you but to those like you who are trying to thrive in this life they’re called to. So fling your pearls high and wild so they can come down hard and stay for another who needs to hear from you, who needs to survive too. Then brace yourself. You’ll be impacted. The backlash won’t feel good, but the process that opens the door to another person’s freedom rarely ends in orgasm. It’s just the right thing to do.”
― Natashia Deón, The Perishing

“What are we?” I say. “Human,” she says. “Fighters,” she says. “And our survival depends on our collective abilities, not our individual might. That’s what it means to be human.”
― Natashia Deón, The Perishing

“But I can still be hurt and taken advantage of because there is no cure to the ills of living with people—not wisdom, not old age—because most of us live in triage.”
― Natashia Deón, The Perishing

“Every mortal human being is only temporarily abled, is only temporarily without an ailment. If you live long enough, you’ll see.”
― Natashia Deón, The Perishing

“Esther deserves to be in every room, but not every room deserves her.”
― Natashia Deón, The Perishing

“no one thinks herself a bigot,” she says. “It’s 1931, and even now, with all of the race separation by neighborhoods, jobs, marriage and churches, with police, no one will see herself a bigot. She’ll simply point to someone more bigoted than she is and say, ‘See, there’s a bigot.”
― Natashia Deón, The Perishing

“People I saw were hurting, I was a nurse and couldn’t let how others behaved affect how I treated them. Even the cruel ones, I treated with—” “Mercy?” “Not mercy. Respect,” she says. “Compassion,” she says. “Mercy assumes you have power. Something you can decide to give or not. Compassion is kind anyway.”
― Natashia Deón, The Perishing

“Nurse and a pattern finder. Sometimes a code breaker. Sometimes just listened to conversations over airwaves.” “What were the messages like?” “They taught me. They taught me that when you can recognize a pattern, you can change an outcome. Change a pattern in your own life, you change your whole life. But I tell you the truth, the only pattern worth repeating is kindness.”
― Natashia Deón, The Perishing

“The couple explodes into laughter because of it, and I’ll admit it hurts me. It hurts me for this stranger, this girl who’s running and is different like me, like a foreign object out of place, in a time when the thoughts of other strangers begin with how to get rid of us.”
― Natashia Deón, The Perishing

“If you’ve never stood in the glow of a fat woman, you’ve missed a sunrise.”
― Natashia Deón, The Perishing

“Death is deep sleeping. A craving our bodies will also satisfy.”
― Natashia Deón, The Perishing

“Everybody I love dies and no matter. Most people won’t survive everyone who loves them. Our lives are meant to mimic a passing breeze that won’t return.”
― Natashia Deón, The Perishing

“Imagination and enthusiasm are the currency of world builders”
― Natashia Deón, The Perishing

“People like us who believe in physics know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. ALBERT EINSTEIN at best we will lose each other at something we have been taught to call the end.”
― Natashia Deón, The Perishing

“And anyway, you don't have to be suicidal to be suicidal. There is also I wouldn't take my own life but I don't mind not being here. It's called passive suicidality and there's nothing wrong with you unless you're ready to stop gambling with your life and can't.”
― Natashia Deón, The Perishing

“What are we?" [Immortal]... "Humans," she says. "Fighters, " she says. "And our survival depends on our collective abilities, not our individual rights.”
― Natashia Deón, The Perishing

“So what I do today is for them [the young who inherit the revolution per Huey P. Newton]. Those I can lift up and cheer for, those who might find some inspiration from what I leave and be restored. Or ignited.”
― Natashia Deón, The Perishing

“We have to forgive ourselves for who we were and choices we now know we got wrong. For the things we've done before that we couldn't do now. Or do the same way.”
― Natashia Deón, The Perishing

“[Lou, 1932] To be a wife, it seems, is to forfeit every gift God gave you to serve your husband... Sure, you repurpose yours for his but usually, that means for children...”
― Natashia Deón, The Perishing

“You've become a bystander, and this article you wrote is no more than lodging a complaint. Where's your interview with migrant families who lost someone?... Where's your investment?... [Bill Mulholland whose career ended after St. Francis Dam collapse ] Without his work, his vision and inventiveness, Los Angeles couldn't have grown the way it has... self-taught immigrant ditch digger who became one of the richest and most powerful men in L.A. That's America... "Even if it is not the whole truth?" "Because it is the truth too.”
― Natashia Deón, The Perishing

“Can you imagine thinking that writing could change the world?... Maybe it's why I can't abandon my yellow pencil, scrawling my memories on these prison walls, the highest corners already filled with lost languages. They're my confessions that'll never be understood now.”
― Natashia Deón, The Perishing