Eddie Cai

“But there I remained, standing in the bathroom, waiting for someone to miraculously find me, to release me from my ties to this life.”
― Bora Chung, Cursed Bunny

“But after all memory could live in the old wheezing entrails: and now it did stand to his hand, incontrovertible and plain, serene, the palm clashing and murmuring dry and wild and faint and in the night but he could face it, thinking, Not could. Will. I want to. So it is the old meat after all, no matter how old. Because if memory exists outside of the flesh it wont be memory because it wont know what it remembers so when she became not then half of memory became not and if I become not then all of remembering will cease to be.”
― William Faulkner, Wild Pams, The; and The Old Man

“I look at my reflection in Second Grandma's brass mirror. As I'd feared, the clever look of a pet rabbit shines in my eyes; words that belong to others, not to me, emerge from my mouth, just as the words emerging from Second Grandma's mouth on her deathbed belonged to others, not to her. My body is covered with the seals of approval of famous people.
I am scared to death.
'Grandson!' she says magnanimously. 'Come home! You're lost if you don't. I know you don't want to, I know you're scared of all the flies, of the clouds of mosquitoes, of snakes slithering across the damp sorghum soil. You revere heroes and loathe bastards, but who among us is not 'the most heroic and most bastardly'? As you stand before me now, I can smell the pet-rabbit odour you brought with you from the city. Quick, jump into the Black Water River and soak there for three days and nights -- I only hope that when the catfish in the river drink the stench that washes off your body they won't grow rabbit ears!'
Second Grandma returns swiftly to her grave. The sorghum stands straight and silent; the sun's rays are wet and scorching hot; there is no wind”
― Mo Yan, Red Sorghum - A Novel Of China