Emma Sloley

“My generation, we're like animals born in captivity: we accept the state of things because it's pretty much all we've ever known. Sailor was old enough to have experienced a better world. And that knowledge was a sadness she could never shake.”
― Emma Sloley, The Island of Last Things

“I had always thought there wasn’t time for beauty anymore. That there was something frivolous about it—the pursuit of it, the mindless worship of it as laid out in the old movies we liked to watch. I had thoroughly internalized the notion that usefulness was the only metric of whether something had value. A carabiner was useful. A multitool was useful. Schedules were useful, as were cages and bars. Tranquilizer darts were regrettable but useful. A flower could be useful but only because it might provide food or diversion for a bird or animal, not because it was beautiful. Its beauty was incidental and easily dismissed. But then Sailor arrived, and I realized that even the smallest sliver of beauty matters and can be useful. Not because it makes a difference on some cosmic level, but because it quiets our restless hearts for a moment. It whispers to us that joy is still possible.”
― Emma Sloley, The Island of Last Things: A Novel