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“Sometimes it isn't what we're battling that takes us, but simply the battle itself.”
― Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

“A person is a whole person when they are good sometimes but not always, and loved by someone regardless.”
― Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

“The truth is that I, like so many of you, spent 2016 trying to hold on to what joy I could. I, like so many of you, am now looking to get my joy back, after it ran away to a more deserving land than this one. And maybe this is what it’s like to live in these times: the happiness is fleeting, and so we search for more while the world burns around us.”
― Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

“I have been thinking, then, about the value of optimism while cities burn, while people are fearing for their lives and the lives of their loved ones, while discourse is reduced to laughing through a chorus of anxiety. A woman in a Cape Cod diner the day after Christmas saw me eyeing the news and shaking my head. She told me that “things will get better,” and I wasn’t sure they would, but I nodded and said, “They surely can’t get any worse,” which is the lie that we all tell, the one that we want to believe, even as there are jaws opening before us.”
― Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us