Bobby Karmakar

“Recovery is made of words, and words have all these rules. How can anything so limited touch something as big as whatever the fuck a 'Higher Power' is? How can it get rid of the big ball of rot inside me? It feels like this giant sponge sucking away anything in the world that's supposed to feel good. What words can touch that?”
― Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!

“Cyrus read on a website once that there was a word for this: sonder. "The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own." Incredible, how naming something took nothing away from its stagger. Language could be totally impotent like that.”
― Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!

“For as long as he could remember, Cyrus had thought it unimaginably strange, the body's need to recharge nightly. The way sleep happened not as a fact like swallowing or using the bathroom, but as a faith. People pretended to be asleep, trusting eventually their pretending would morph into the real thing. It was a lie you practiced nightly—or, if not a lie, at least a performance. And while performance did not necessarily void sincerity, it certainly changed it. The speech you practiced in front of the mirror was always different than the one you ended up giving.”
― Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!

“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!