Michelle Ardillo

“When nothing else subsists from the past, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered...the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls...bearing resiliently, on tiny and almost impalpable drops of their essence, the immense edifice of memory”
― Marcel Proust

“There is an old Jewish story, an ordinary Jewish joke. A father was teaching his little son to be less afraid and have more courage. “Jump,” he said, “and I will catch you.” And the little boy trusted him and the little boy jumped. And when his father caught him he felt filled with love. And when he didn’t, he was filled with something else…something more. Life. (From the movie 'Then She Found Me.')”
― Elinor Lipman, Then She Found Me

“As for my approach to historical fiction, I think what I’m drawing from is Saidiya Hartman’s technique of critical fabulation, which is a way of writing against the grain, of injecting empathy and realism to the archival record of a history that feels abstract to us.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface