Sharon Lee

“What was there to complain about? A murdered wife? A sore back? The wrong grade copper? Living happened till it didn't. There was no choice in it. To say no to a new day would be unthinkable. So each morning you said yes, then stepped into the consequence.”
― Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!

“Shanghai was not alone in holding postwar trials. They were held everywhere, and it is worth asking why. What was gained? They were less about reestablishing the rule of law than about creating what Tony Judt has tagged as "the postwar." The Second World War ended in 1945, but the postwar went on. This was an era in which the victors who had prevailed, sanctified by the sacrifice of those who had worked and fought for that victory, could not be questioned. This condition lasted for decades, perpetuated through curricula and public entertainment in an almost endless loop of self-congratulation that brooked no alternative. The Gaullists in France, the Communists in China, The Nationalists in Taiwan, and the list could go on: the war gave them the right to impose their terms on the people they ruled.”
― Timothy Brook, Great State: China and the World

“If the mortal sin of the suicide is greed, to hoard stillness and calm for yourself while dispersing your riotous internal pain among all those who survive you, then the mortal sin of the martyr must be pride, the vanity, the hubris to believe not only that your death could mean more than your living, but that your death could mean more than death itself—which, because it is inevitable, means nothing.”
― Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!

“The performance of certainty seemed to be at the root of so much grief. Everyone in America seemed to be afraid and hurting and angry, starving for a fight they could win. And more than that even, they seemed certain their natural state was to be happy, contented, and rich. The genesis of everyone's pain had to be external, such was their certainty.”
― Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!