“Always, always boys. Whole classes, boys shaped like teddy beats or tree lizards. Always first to pull out their opinions, shove their knowledge at each other. I guess there's many ways engineering could feel but mostly it felt like any place feels where there's twenty boys and three girls. I had to go in with my back like a rod. Be the baddest both is what I said, in my head. And then did.”
― Sharks in the Time of Saviors
― Sharks in the Time of Saviors
“Nana is the reason I began this work, but not in a wholesome, made-for-TED Talk kind of way Instead, this science was a way for me to challenge myself, to do something truly hard, and in so doing to work through all of my misunderstandings about his addiction and all of my shame. Because I still have so much shame. I'm full to the brim with it; I'm spilling over. I can look at my data again and again. I can look at scan after scan of drug-addicted brains shot through with holes, Swiss-cheesed, atrophied, irreparable. I can watch that blue light flash through the brain of a mouse and note the behavioral changes that take place because of it, and know how many years of difficult, arduous science went into those tiny changes, and still, still, think, Why didn't Nana stop? Why didn't he get better for us? For me?”
― Transcendent Kingdom
― Transcendent Kingdom
“She never said shit like this to the boys, only to me. Like I was supposed to guilty of ambition while they were just living their full potential.”
― Sharks in the Time of Saviors
― Sharks in the Time of Saviors
“We read the Bible how we want to read it. It doesn't change, but we do.”
― Transcendent Kingdom
― Transcendent Kingdom
“I had watched Nana walk into the alley and I had watched my mother go after him, and I was so angry at them for not being strong enough to stay in the light. And so I did the hard thing.”
― Transcendent Kingdom
― Transcendent Kingdom
Jess’s 2025 Year in Books
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