Nathaniel Ramos > Nathaniel's Quotes

“You know, they straightened out the Mississippi River in places, to make room for hourse and livable acreage. Occasionally the river floods these places. "Floods" is the word they use, but in fact it is not flooding; it is remembering. Remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. Writers are like that: remembering where we were, that valley we ran through, what the banks were like, the light that was there and the route back to our original place. It is emotional memory--what the nerves and the skin remember as well as how it appeared. And a rush of imagination is our "flooding.”
― Toni Morrison

“broad leaves are born
we relearn fragile green
waves of wind
light harvested into food
sun making breath
river washing land
lake suffocating ice
trees bleeding sweet

i’ve only ever seen you
hitchhiking into dreams
or running from the headlights
but today
here you are
just sleeping. sitting. eating
hours of still
armfuls of nothing.”
― Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Islands of Decolonial Love: Stories & Songs

“To love a place is not enough. We must find ways to heal it.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

“Paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the living world, receiving the gifts with open eyes and open heart.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

“I, too, want to feel the heat with somebody or, at worst, I want to be a child of the heat's eager production, the smoke that rises & dances thick in the air, a ghost over those who labor in our names & then become the ghosts themselves & it's a shame our wings don't arrive until after we've already raced off the cliff & met whatever waits below & it's a shame to still have living hands & barely anything left worthy of touch.”
― Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us