Ahmed

“Fuck what you have heard or what you have seen in your son. He may lie about homework and laugh when the teacher calls home. He may curse his teacher, propose arson for the whole public system. But inside is the same sense that was in me. None of us ever want to fail. None of us want to be unworthy, to not measure up.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons and an Unlikely Road to Manhood

“The miracle is not to walk on water or in thin air, but to walk on Earth. Walk in such a way that you become fully alive and joy and happiness are possible. That is the miracle that everyone can perform.... If you have mindfulness, concentration, and insight then every step you make on this Earth is performing a miracle.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh

“To preserve the values of the civilized world, it is necessary to set fire to a library. To blow up a mosque. To incinerate olive trees. To dress up in the lingerie of women who fled and then take pictures. To level universities. To loot jewelry, art, banks, food. To arrest children for picking vegetables. To shoot children for throwing stones. To parade the captured in their underwear. To break a man’s teeth and shove a toilet brush in his mouth. To let combat dogs loose on a man with Down syndrome and then leave him to die. Otherwise, the uncivilized world might win.”
― Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

“There may be no advice given to young creative types more often than "Stay hungry." Hunger is encouraged by commencement speakers, noted as a requirement in job listings, looked back on fondly by one-time strivers now on the far side of their golden years. Hunger is everything because its nothing--not yet-- just raw promise, one lack that may eclipse others: talent, pedigree, luck. Like sharks, the hungry must always keep moving, hunting, killing, "killing it." We assure the hungry that they are poised to go far--over and beyond the bodies of the frightened and dull and easily sated. At the end of the day they will stand smiling, jaws bloodied, still wanting more.

When we talk about hunger this way -- as shorthand for a certain noble stripe of ambition--we tend to obscure its roots in our bodies, our biology. Even in this strange sliver of the world where food is ample to the point of thread, hunger remains a real, animal sensation. Every few hours our bodies rumble with discomfort and we are expected to soothe them, whether or not we understand or trust the nature of their want. Perhaps this hunger is honest, or perhaps it's just that you smelled the cookies baking or you got stood up or cut off or side-eyed or just happened to see the clock hit eleven thirty, a time you were hungry before. Hunger confuses the needs of our minds with the needs of our bellies. Hunger lies like a child.

But then, whether or not you give into your hunger, even if you give it nothing at all, it always slinks away; but then, it always returns. It is a fundamental condition. We seem to forget this when we talk about the appetites of the young. "Stay hungry," we tell them, as if they have been drafted into some cannibal army and must devour their own to have any hope of survival. "Stay hungry," we tell them, as if they have any choice at all.”
― Manjula Martin, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living