Joshua Bennett > Quotes

“Who can be alive today
& not study grief?”
― Joshua Bennett, The Sobbing School

“Z is for zealotry: national pride like an infinite zipline, hyperdrive, the fastest way down.”
― Joshua Bennett, Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019

“God
bless the no, my story
is not for sale
the no, this body
belongs to me & the earth
alone, the see, the thing
about souls
is they by definition
cannot be owned”
― Joshua Bennett

“My friends often state in the midst of otherwise
loving group chat missives that life is trash, though

we all keep trying to make one for some reason
or another”
― Joshua Bennett, The Study of Human Life

“God bless
every beautiful thing
called monstrous
since the dawn
of a colonizer’s time.”
― Joshua Bennett

“and I’m really just searching
for better, more redemptive

language is the thing,
some version of the story

where all the characters
inside look like me and every

single one of us escapes
with our heads.”
― Joshua Bennett, The Study of Human Life

“God bless the unkillable
interior bless the uprising
bless the rebellion bless
the overflow God
bless everything that survives
the fire”
― Joshua Bennett

“God bless the vulnerable
ones. How they call us
toward love & its infinite,
unthinkable costs.”
― Joshua Bennett

“Death is trash. Love is a robust engagement
with the trash of another.”
― Joshua Bennett, The Study of Human Life