Sophia Mughal

“an anthropologist who wrote about how the first artifact of civilization wasn’t a hammer or arrowhead, but a human femur—discovered in Madagascar—that showed signs of having healed from a bad fracture. In the animal world, a broken leg meant you starved, so a healed femur meant that some human had supported another’s long recovery, fed them, cleaned the wound. And thus, the author argued, began civilization. Augured not by an instrument of murder, but by a fracture bound, a bit of food brought back for another.”
― Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!

“Then we’d lick up the blood, like the time when Grandpa told me about how Saint Anthony had a dog that healed his wounds when he was about to die. That was before Grandpa left Nana for the German lady, never to be seen again. I dreamed of healing Isora’s sadness, I wanted to be her dog and I wanted her to be my saint with scraped knees.”
― Andrea Abreu López, Panza de burro

“This restlessness, this painful feeling of detachment, was my besetting torment, something that would never allow me really to be at home among the objects about me, or even to think of the bed on which I slept as really mine.”
― Luigi Pirandello

“It's this way: when you're really wise, you say: 'I mustn't do this,' or 'I mustn't do that—otherwise ... I'll be putting my foot in it.' Very well, you discover, sooner or later, that life itself means putting one foot in after another; and the man who never made a fool of himself is the man who never really lived; and there you are!”
― Luigi Pirandello, Il fu Mattia Pascal / Novelle per un anno / I vecchi e i giovani