Jess

“We read the Bible how we want to read it. It doesn't change, but we do.”
― Yaa Gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom

“Phillip with his raging boner for the sound of his own voice, always the first to pipe up with the proposed solution.”
― Kawai Strong Washburn, Sharks in the Time of Saviors

“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.”
― Yaa Gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom

“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?”
― Yaa Gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom