Jess

“I want to insist that our being alive is beautiful enough to be worthy of replication. And so what? So what if all I ever made of my life was more of it?”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Women, they have minds, and they have souls, as well as just hearts. And they’ve got ambition, and they’ve got talent, as well as just beauty. I’m so sick of people saying that love is all a woman is fit for.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“Cities are stories and I only remember what I
myself lived, or fragments from your stories and what you lived, but they are truncated. I remember their stories very well. The ones I learned in school, heard on TV, and read and wrote in order to pass exams. I had to tell their stories to pass in school and college. That’s why I remember them like I remember my ID number. I know it by heart and can recite it any minute. I memorised their stories and their white dreams
about this place so as to pass exams. But I carved my stories, yours, and those of others who are like us, inside me. We inherit memory the way we inherit the colour of our eyes and skin. We inherit the sound of laughter just as we inherit the sound of tears. Your memory pains me.”
― Ibtisam Azem, The Book of Disappearance

“What were you before you met me?"
"I think I was drowning"
"And what are you now?"
"Water”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous