Anton > Anton's Quotes

“They will want you to succeed, but never more than them. They will write their names on your leash and call you necessary, call you urgent.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“But for a society buit on exploitation, there is no greater threat than having no one left to oppress.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Stone Sky

“He wants me to be myself like a leopard might be herself in a city zoo. Inert, waiting to be fed. Not out in the wild, with tendon in her teeth.”
― Raven Leilani, Luster

“Mother, do you grieve?
Know that I will return to you. I will be a flutter in the leaves above where you sit, cooking ruti on the stove. I will be the stray cloud which shields you from the days of sun. I will be the thunder that wakes you before rain floods the room.
When you walk to the market, I will return to you as footprint on the soil. At night, when you close your eyes, I will appear as impress on the bed.”
― Megha Majumdar, A Burning

“There were many ways to be alienated from someone, few to actually belong.”
― Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half

“Maybe she is reaching out because she has sent another man to his grave prematurely. Or maybe she wants to know if I can buy eggs on the way home. Either way, I’m not picking up.”
― Oyinkan Braithwaite, My Sister, the Serial Killer

“We cannot help but be interested in the stories of people that history pushes aside so thoughtlessly.”
― Min Jin Lee, Pachinko

“Her failure didn’t matter, because at least she’d been true to her impossible dream until the very end.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“I want to live,’ she repeated, ‘and live, and thrive, and survive them. I want a future. I don’t think death is a reprieve. I think it’s – it’s just the end. It forecloses everything – a future where I might be happy, and free. And it’s not about being brave. It’s about wanting another chance. Even if all I did was run away, even if I never lifted a finger to help anyone else as long as I lived – at least I would get to be happy. At least the world might be all right, just for a day, just for me. Is that selfish?”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“Of course, my mother is her own person. Of course, she contains multitudes. She reacts in ways that surprise me, in part, simply because she isn't me. I forget this and relearn it anew because it's a lesson that doesn't, that can't stick. I knew her only as she is defined against me, in her role as my mother, so when I see her as herself, like when she gets catcalled on the street, there's dissonance. When she wants for me things that I don't want for myself--Christ, marriage, children--I am angry that she doesn't understand me, doesn't see me as my own, separate person, but that anger stems from the fact that I don't see her that way either. I want her to know what I want the same way I know it, intimately, immediately, I want her to get well because I want her to get well, and isn't that enough? My first thought, the year my brother died and my mother took to bed, was that I needed her to be mine again, a mother as I understood it. And when she didn't get up, when she lay there day in and day out, wasting away, I was reminded that I didn't know her, not wholly and completely. I would never know her.”
― Yaa Gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom

“Every time I was around them, they acted like I was a monster. So I said goddamnit, I'll be the worst monster you ever saw!”
― Victor LaValle, The Ballad of Black Tom

“It is a terrible thing, this kindess that human beings do not lose. Terrible, because when we are finally naked in the dark and cold, it is all we have. We who are so rich, so full of strength, we end up with that small change. We have nothing else to give. ”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“You cannot stick a knife in a goat and then say, "now I will remove my knife slowly - so let things be easy and clean; let there be no mess." There will always be blood.”
― Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing

“Sometimes, by accident, people remind you of the reasons you shouldn’t stay close to them.”
― Genevieve Valentine, Dream Houses

“Cursed or not, she drew her bow across as she would draw her breath. Queer or not, she would play with a cursed bow and be called an abomination. Trans or not, deviant or not, that did not mean there was anything wrong with her love.”
― Ryka Aoki, Light from Uncommon Stars

“Freedom will have to be imagined by the shapeshifters, actors, invisibles, ghosts, magicians, vagabonds, outcasts, outsiders. Always the only hope. I combed the country for as many as I could find and I watched them, for my own heart, for my own hope, for my own personal goings-on. Because that is my sustenance. I need hope the way people need blood, the way people need food. And they need, as we all do, somebody to see them, to bear them witness, to watch over them lovingly. So I did. And I do. I see them and I love them and I'm unashamed of my heart. They are my diamonds in the dust.”
― Eloghosa Osunde, Vagabonds!

“Let's make sure that by the time the morning comes, it rises gently and with a humble heart, like it knows what we tried to do to the world tonight, what we changed in the air forever. Let it rise like it will never again forget that we were here.”
― Eloghosa Osunde, Vagabonds!

“I’m sick of hiding in my shell. It’s this glass shell that has distanced me from the world, protecting me from it. If I avoid interacting with people more than I need to, then I can avoid getting hurt more than I need to as well. But … if the outside world has a place for me, then I want to try going out there to find it.”
― Kotomi Li, Solo Dance

“Our mouths give voice to goals, dreams, and even lies. Ultimately, we will be judged on our follow-through, on our ability to turn our stirring words into reality. My cause was born of a lie, but a lie can be the spark that leads to virtue.”
― Rasheed Newson, My Government Means to Kill Me

“I had grown accustomed to carrying around this feeling of emptiness inside me, an infinite hollow waiting to be filled. I woke up with that feeling, carried it with me all day, and took it to bed. ... It felt as if there were two beings living inside me; one was content with the boredom and the other was constantly on the lookout for something thrilling. When I tried to silence her, sticking to my routine and the life my mother laid out for me, she made us sad for days. I persevered in spite of being at odds with myself, hoping that someday soon, something worth living for would come along.”
― Musih Tedji Xaviere, These Letters End in Tears

“She shook her head, saying she didn’t want to talk about it. That meant her emotions were so precious that she didn’t want to ruin something by trying to articulate her feelings about it. Because I had moved on with my life, she offered me only the dregs of reconciliation, a cup of black coffee with no sugar, just cream on the side. I’d taken a sip of each, and I have to say, I preferred the coffee. The cream agreed with me about as much as she did.”
― Qiu Miaojin, Notes of a Crocodile

“All too soon I realized that I was an innately beautiful peacock and decided that I shouldn’t let myself go. However lazy, a peacock still ought to give its feathers a regular preening, and having been bestowed with such a magnificent set, I couldn’t help but seek the mainstream of society as a mirror. With that peacock swagger, I found it hard to resist indulging in a little strutting, but that’s how it went, and it was a fundamentally bad habit.”
― Qiu Miaojin, Notes of a Crocodile

“Sweeping that other me into their arms, they led me in a dance within societal norms, along a trajectory based on a delusion. (Though I couldn't define what I was, I knew what I wasn't.)”
― Qiu Miaojin, Notes of a Crocodile

“And like blue eyes and whiteness, eventually I learned the Blue Eyes White Dragon was simply a construct too. A piece of flimsy card stock, its value ascribed by a mysterious higher power. I could go online and buy a million Blue Eyes White Dragon cards, and similarly, I could walk down the street of our suburb and see blue-eyed white girls everywhere, available a dime a dozen.”
― Jade Song, Chlorine

“Every time I led him to the right place at the right time, I first quietly eliminated all the places and times that were wrong. Luck is only someone else’s labour.”
― Vajra Chandrasekera, The Saint of Bright Doors

“All the years she had given up to the Pocket. The sacrifices that were now irrelevant. There would be no more lost time. No more derelicts stranded in the fringe without hope of rescue. No more last goodbyes to old friends. No skipping across the entire lifetimes of forgotten lovers. It was so beautiful, and so horrible, she couldn’t breathe.”
― Simon Jimenez, The Vanished Birds

“They cut so much from you, but not everything, it seems. They still believe memories are citizens of the mind. But memories also live in the bones, and the blood.”
― Simon Jimenez, The Vanished Birds

“Was I expected to find solace in these people? I felt alone, perfectly alone. So alone I felt divine. Divine like a lonely god unfathomable to anyone but herself.”
― Gerardo Sámano Córdova, Monstrilio

“Lena appeared. She hated churches, God specifically, a deep scorn only possible if there was love to begin with, so she didn’t go to the mass, not even for me, and I wouldn’t have asked. She wore loose jeans, white sneakers, a white shirt, and a vermillion blazer—a shock of color against all the black. Scandalously inappropriate. Gorgeous.”
― Gerardo Sámano Córdova, Monstrilio

“I wanted him to snap, to finally and absolutely lose it. To break. He was withering. To wither is not the same as to break; to break is to have pieces to put back together, and to wither is to dry up, to wilt, to lose bone, to die, and death is the most boring. I needed to see pieces. So I broke the vase. He looked at me with bland pity, as if I were the one withering.”
― Gerardo Sámano Córdova, Monstrilio