Gian Sardar > Quotes

“You love them for who they are, sure. That’s the easy part. But you also love them despite who they are. That’s the important part.”
― Gian Sardar, Take What You Can Carry

“You earn your place beside someone by not walking away. Even when all you want to do is run.”
― Gian Sardar, Take What You Can Carry

“If I am to be with someone forever, it will be because I cannot stay away. Right or wrong. There will be no choice.”
― Gian Sardar, Take What You Can Carry

“It was not their fault either,” Soran says. “The families who were moved in. Everyone a pawn in a political agenda.”
― Gian Sardar, Take What You Can Carry

“the field, she catches a flash of silver: the bride’s sisters and friends are dancing with knives. “They’re dancing with knives.” He turns. “They’re about to cut the cake. That’s to let him know they can handle knives. That he should be good to their sister. That they will protect her.” “A warning.” “Kurds aren’t known for being subtle.”
― Gian Sardar, Take What You Can Carry

“Do you know there’s no word in Kurdish for plan? You get worried if someone’s on time, because it means they have bad news. Or they want something. Also, I said I might come. Not that I would.”
― Gian Sardar, Take What You Can Carry

“If it’s too much to see how big a problem is, then don’t. Get closer. Make it smaller.” With his chin, he motions to the room. “Here. What you can do today. Look for that. For the people around you, because they will wake up, and they will remember.”
― Gian Sardar, Take What You Can Carry

“It’s too bad we’re not able to be friends with our parents before becoming their children, isn’t it?”
― Gian Sardar, When the World Goes Quiet

“Neanderthal graves. Bones beneath her feet, perhaps. The rocks in the garden would’ve once been larger, bright and shadowed with early-human firelight, and the land around them would’ve seemed empty and forever. There’d have been no concept of oceans. No awareness of planets. And here, right before her, are those same silhouettes of mountains, the same spikes of peaks. A shared view, glimpsed across time.”
― Gian Sardar, Take What You Can Carry

“Loss keeps going, you know? It doesn’t just stop with what was taken from you. It grabs new things all the time. You think you’re up against missing the memories, all that happened, but Christ if you don’t miss all that didn’t happen even more.”
― Gian Sardar, Take What You Can Carry

“there is no denying luck. That you were born where you were. That you can choose. That you have the privilege of being bored. And do not have to leave your family. Or save your family.” “What if I can’t make up for that?” “Who says you have to? Sometimes living is all you have to do. Besides, you’d be surprised how you can save someone.”
― Gian Sardar, Take What You Can Carry

“In her childhood, the grass was green. There were cleats and freshly laundered jerseys with silly team names and sliced oranges on the sideline. And to see the differences, to find these beautiful boys worthy of curiosity, of examination—it’s the core of her chosen profession but it feels like human sightseeing. A tour of others. Look at these poor boys, happy despite everything.”
― Gian Sardar, Take What You Can Carry

“We grew up next door. He’s been there since the start. If I show him a scar, he remembers the blood.”
― Gian Sardar, Take What You Can Carry

“The in love part of the first few months. That is when they can do no wrong and your stomach jumps and everything is bliss. But really, truly, loving someone? To me? What in love becomes? That’s deeper. That’s when they can do wrong and it’s not always sunshine. You love them for who they are, sure. That’s the easy part. But you also love them despite who they are.”
― Gian Sardar, Take What You Can Carry

“You love someone because of who they are but also—and maybe more important—despite who they are.”
― Gian Sardar, Take What You Can Carry

“You cannot tell me me.”
― Gian Sardar, Take What You Can Carry

“After so much war and politics and struggle, here it is, the essence. A cave for shelter. Flowers for grief. Uncomplicated and pure. So basic, what’s needed, and yet how easily she forgets.”
― Gian Sardar, Take What You Can Carry

“The sounds: hollering, singing, music playing. Even the women are like bright chimes when they walk, gold adornments jingling. Throughout it all, the groom’s family waits with horses for the bride, who eventually arrives in a bold red dress and a red veil edged in gold, walking behind a man who carries a giant mirror bright with her reflection. After a lifetime of weddings in white ordered silence, the day is a beautiful shock.”
― Gian Sardar, Take What You Can Carry

“But male, female, you’re either an artist who does their art or one who doesn’t. And there might be a price for doing it, but I’ll tell you there’s a greater price for not.”
― Gian Sardar, When the World Goes Quiet

“imagine a life without what you love is hard.”
― Gian Sardar, When the World Goes Quiet

“There are some who need God to be good, because their morality comes from being watched, August has said. Those people are dangerous the second they stop believing. After all, if no one’s there to punish them for a sin, why not be bad?”
― Gian Sardar, When the World Goes Quiet

“In the last decade, most of her friends—even those who’d not gone to war—had let the concept of God be beaten away in torrents of Vietnamese rain, burned in the jungles, or obliterated in a blast that claimed a village. A world of such atrocities could not be under the jurisdiction of a compassionate God, and who wanted to believe in an uncompassionate God?”
― Gian Sardar, Take What You Can Carry

“Can you love someone’s art and not them?”
― Gian Sardar, Land of Dreams

“A confluence. Something underestimated that’s found its power. And she will remember this day with the birds in the sky, that sometimes you must stop and look up because magic exists whether you see it or not, and it’s so much better to get the glimpse. And so she will.”
― Gian Sardar, Take What You Can Carry

“But I’m telling you, you can’t see the valley when you’re in the middle of climbing the hill.”
― Gian Sardar, When the World Goes Quiet

“everything you do is so life places that child in your arms.”
― Gian Sardar, When the World Goes Quiet

“Two boys play with a soccer ball. Their clothes are patched and dotted with stains, one brown shirt with Snoopy as the Flying Ace but with chunks of white worn away, Snoopy’s existence precarious. Their ball is scuffed. Somewhat deflated. Most likely it was found, discarded by someone who had one better, and the empty lot they’re in is scattered with broken slabs of concrete and thick, scraggly thistles. But the boys are in heaven. Olivia lifts her camera, wanting to capture their joy, the way they’ve adapted the physical obstacles into part of their game, but with one click, she realizes that in truth it’s everything else that makes the photo interesting, that makes their joy stand out. It’s their circumstance. Their stains and tears. Their broken field.”
― Gian Sardar, Take What You Can Carry

“The reality of this world is that tragedy occurs undocumented and daily, and what happened this evening was a mere flash within a greater explosion and is one most people will never know took place.”
― Gian Sardar, Take What You Can Carry

“Love”
― Gian Sardar, Land of Dreams

“A bullet kills at the end of the war the same way it does at the start.”
― Gian Sardar, When the World Goes Quiet