Lacey Hoffman

“But I can’t quit the one thing that gives meaning to my life. Writing is the closest thing we have to real magic. Writing is creating something out of nothing, is opening doors to other lands. Writing gives you power to shape your own world when the real one hurts too much. To stop writing would kill me. I’d never be able to walk through a bookstore without fingering the spines with longing, wondering at the lengthy editorial process that got these titles on shelves and reminiscing about my own. And I’d spend the rest of life curdling with jealousy every time someone like Emmy Cho gets a book deal, every time I learn that some young up-and-comer is living the life I should be living. Writing has formed the core of my identity since I was a child. After Dad died, after Mom withdrew into herself, and after Rory decided to forge a life without me, writing gave me a reason to stay alive. And as miserable as it makes me, I’ll cling to that magic for as long as I live.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“Our plane lands ahead of schedule, but it’s still late at night when we finally pull up to our house. The stars and the crickets are all out and calling us home. Our curtains are drawn, but a soft glow pours around the edges. A familiar pang hits me. This is how the house used to look when I came home after dark and Mom was in the living room, trilling away at the piano. If I don’t walk inside, maybe I can just stand out here with my suitcase and feel like she’s still there, waiting for me to go in so she can shout a greeting over the music without stopping her fingers. I can pretend that when she finishes the Rachmaninoff, she’ll swing her legs around the piano bench and leap up to give me a hug. And in a few days, when it’s Sunday, I’ll roll out of bed and find her in the kitchen making waffles with berries and whipped cream. I’ll hear that sunny voice chirp “Good morning!” to me while I’m still shaking off the fog of sleep, and I’ll grunt back in response, remember to smile at her, offer to help mix the batter. I’ll do all the things I constantly forgot to, all the things I wish I could go back and add in like another layer on a watercolor painting. “You coming, Leigh?” says Dad. Our driver pulls away from the house, and then there’s just me standing in the driveway with my suitcase, staring as Dad fiddles with his keys on the front porch. I let loose a long, slow exhale. “Guess we forgot to turn off the lights, huh?” “We didn’t,” he says, and the two simple words send my heart racing. Because what could that mean, except that Mom is actually alive and home and waiting for us right inside? My heart speeds as I drag my suitcase up to the porch and haul it in, trailing after Dad through the soft yellow light and into our house. “You’re home! Welcome back!” Arms wrap around me, and it takes a moment too long for me to process the shoulder pressing into my cheek, the soft shirt against my skin, the smell of deodorant and shampoo all wrong.”
― Emily X.R. Pan, The Astonishing Color of After

“Agate finishes piling up books and starts in on her cheese slices. “Are you ready? I want to tell you about pulsars.” “Should I even try to say no, here?” “SETI is really important, Simon. It’s proof that we’re not alone.” I catch myself thinking about being alone. I don’t want to make waves in my new town, and faking a message from space seems kind of…wavy. But Agate is looking at me with galaxy-blue eyes and her tongue pushing on her teeth like words are going to burst out of her, and to be honest, saying no to that seems like the more immediate threat. Not that she’d be angry—I mean S, maybe—but she’d be sad and she’d leave, and I kind of don’t want her to leave. “Okay, fine,” I say. “Tell me about pulsars.”
― Erin Bow, Simon Sort of Says:

“Here are a few statistics: Someone in the world dies by suicide every forty seconds. For every death by suicide there are more than twenty others attempting it. It’s the tenth-ranking cause of death in the United States. One of every sixty-two Americans is a suicide loss survivor. Those were taken from the World Health Organization and the American Association of Suicidology’s official data—the most recent available at the end of 2018 (the time of my writing this updated note).”
― Emily X.R. Pan, The Astonishing Color of After