Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century Quotes

“One adult can be lured into pretend, can taste the tea in our toy cup, hear the voice on the toy phone. One adult could have seen what we saw and carried it quietly within her forever. But not four. Four adults have to agree on what happened, agree on the rules. Four adults can talk to each other until reality straightens, until doubt is crushed, until their memories unstitch and reform. Four adults never see a miracle at once.”
― Kim Fu, Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century

“I want her to come back. I want to sit shivering on the cold concrete floor of our unfinished basement, the washing machine against my back, a widowed wreck, boredom and disdain and resentment drained away after a medieval bloodletting, knowing who I'd be without her, full of new things to tell her, knowing she's the only person who will understand. She didn't have to ask why I'd done it.”
― Kim Fu, Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century

“My wife and I are that other kind of rich: the misers among you, in our quaint three-bedroom house in the suburbs, unrenovated since the 1990s, one modest hatchback car between us, our big-box store generic clothes, our outdated phones and computers. Lucky in our birthright privileges, in our inheritance, in our jobs, in the stock market, hoarding cash for reasons that stopped being clear to us long ago, that make less and less sense the older we get. We have no children. Our parents are dead. We keep working, we clean our own toilets, rake our own yard. We use our vacations to go camping in-state. We’ll give it all away upon our deaths, and there will be one of those shocked news stories about people like us and our secret millions, the sudden windfall upon our pet causes and distant nieces and nephews. Why don’t we help anyone while we’re alive? Our once-reasonable anxieties grown distorted, outsized, habitual. There will never be enough money to make us feel safe.”
― Kim Fu, Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century

“Just imagine it: no longer feeling guilty for everything you have and don't deserve, for an unjust world bent in your favor, paying the piper at last. Wasn't it worth it, after all? My head on a pike for this sweet, short, pleasure-drenched life.”
― Kim Fu, Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century