Stephanie

“God is the most uninteresting answer to the most interesting questions.”
― Hernan Diaz, Trust

“The alternative to appropriation is a world in which artists only reference their own cultures."

"That's an oversimplification of the issue."

"The alternative to appropriation is a world where white European people make art about white European people with only white European references in it. Swap African or Asian or Latin or whatever culture you want for European. A world where everyone is blind and deaf to any culture or experience that is not their own. I hate that world don't you? I'm terrified of that world and I don't want to live in a that world, and as a mixed race person, I literally don't exist in it. My dad, who I barely knew, was Jewish. My mom was an American-born Korean. I was raised by Korean immigrant grandparents in Korea Town Los Angeles and as any mixed race person will tell you-- to be half of two things is to be whole of nothing.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“Mira was scowling. It annoyed her, almost as a matter of principle, that anyone of this man's age, race, gender, wealth, and associated privilege should have used his power--allegedly--for good, should have built his business--allegedly--up from the ground, from nothing, and should possess--allegedly--the very kind of rural authenticity that she herself most envied and pursued. Even more annoying was the fact that she had never heard of the orange-fronted parakeet, which she now searched for, still scowling, in a separate tab. Like all self-mythologising rebels, Mira preferred enemies to rivals, and often turned her rivals into enemies, the better to disdain them as secret agents of the status quo. But because this was not a conscious habit, she experienced only a vague feeling of righteous defiance as, unable to dismiss Owen Darvish, she told herself instead that she disliked him.”
― Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood

“He masticated words like if he didn’t they would come out the other end uncomfortably whole.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Absolution