Jandi

“I wanted to write about a postapocalyptic world where our civilization was not looked back on with awe and admiration, as it is in so many books of the genre, but disdained as the fuckwits we are, who wrecked a perfect biosphere because we couldn’t be bothered not to.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Past Is Red

“It’s my own little joke, even though the punchline is sadness. I think a joke like that is a present you make to yourself, so every time you say it, even if it hurts, you get a very cohesive feeling out of it, because the past you and the present you are talking to each other, and it’s nice to have friends.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Past Is Red

“in Jerusalem, every footstep is a grave. /Here, every footstep is a grave, / every grandmother is a Jerusalem.”
― Mohammed El-Kurd

“A woman tells him a pen is a sword. What’s a pen
to a rifle? Another fed him a sonnet. If Shakespeare
was from here he wouldn’t be writing.”
― Mohammed El-Kurd, Rifqa