amanda*ೃ༄

“There comes a moment for the immigrant's child when you realize you and your parents are assimilating at the same time. Later, I understood that we were both sifting, store to store, for some possible future -- that we were both mystified by the same fashions, trends, and bits of language. That my late night trips to the record store with my dad had been about discovery, not mastery. Later still, I came to recognize that assimilation as a whole was a race toward a horizon that wasn't fixed. The ideal was ever shifting, and your accent would never be quite perfect. It was a set of compromises sold to you as a contract. Assimilation was not a problem to be solved but the problem itself.”
― Hua Hsu, Stay True

“Love was an action, an instinct, a response roused by unplanned moments and small gestures, an inconvenience in someone else’s favor.”
― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

“My pain was never more valuable than his potential.”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name

“I am but paper. Brittle and thin. I am held up to the sun, and it shines right through me. I get written on, and I can never be used again. These scratches are a history. They’re a story. They tell things for others to read, but they only see the words, and not what the words are written upon. I am but paper, and though there are many like me, none are exactly the same. I am parched parchment. I have lines. I have holes. Get me wet, and I melt. Light me on fire, and I burn. Take me in hardened hands, and I crumple. I tear. I am but paper. Brittle and thin.”
― T.J. Klune, The House in the Cerulean Sea