Anna

“and at one point she held my hand and asked what I was thinking, and I told her that you had once been a dolphin in the Banana River, that you had saved me from drowning, that it had felt too Disney to ever say out loud but that I wanted her to know me, I wanted to tell her more, to blow it wide open, and I nearly told her my real name, but I was too startled by her face, her faint smile, the way she nodded her head. I could tell she thought I was crazy, or making shit up, and I suppose I don't blame her. I stared at the deep, dark, dolphin-free Hudson, a real river with a swift current, and thought about trying again.”
― Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

“I discovered what people are capable of, in other words, anything: sublime or deadly desires, lack of dignity, attitudes and beliefs I had found absurd in others until I myself turned to them. Without knowing it, he brought me closer to the world.”
― Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

“You cannot act upon what you cannot see. And we are plagued by dead language and dead stories that serve people whose aim is nothing short of a dead world. And it is not enough to stand against these dissemblers. There has to be something in you, something that hungers for clarity. And you will need that hunger, because if you follow that path, soon enough you will find yourself confronting not just their myths, not just their stories, but your own.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message

“I mean that we must figure out, together, what we are willing to lie about for the sake of a clean memory. The story ends with no sinners, because it must. Everyone is washed clean. A city holds its breath for decades, waiting for something good to descend, and then it does. This, I believe, means that everything resets, and so does everyone within the container of this glorious happening. To enter the church of triumph, everyone must be absolved, and so everyone is. The pistols vanish from the waistbands of cops, from the sock drawers of dealers. What you thought to be blood, dried on the concrete of the park, is instead handprints left by children who pressed their hands into dark paint and left behind a symbol of their living. Yes, living, the children are alive, even the ones thought to be dead. Even the ones who were on the news, even the ones some of us marched in the streets for and broke glass windows for and threw ourselves into police shields for. In the end of this story, there are tattoos that vanish from the skin of those who got the names of the gone-too-soon inked on them, because no one is gone too soon. Yes, if we are to cure ourselves of curses, let us cure ourselves of all the curses tonight, let the lake cough its thick fog upon the people and let them be unmoved by the sweat. What is sweat but decoration, jewelry upon the extended arms beckoning people toward a revival?”
― Hanif Abdurraqib, There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension