Corriné

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.”
― Ursula K. LeGuin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

“The mother who kept your seventeen years
locked up at home
the mother who beneath a five-starred flag
severed the ties of noble blood
which bound her own family
woke when you fixed her with your final gaze
bearing your seventeen-year-old bequest
she has crossed and recrossed every graveyard
every time she was about to fall
the spectral breath of a seventeen-year-old
propped her up
and sent her on her way

Surpassing age
surpassing death
your seventeen years
will last forever”
― Liu Xiaobo, No Enemies, No Hatred: Selected Essays and Poems

“in your dream, you are jealous of tragedies.
and the truth is, we all want our own tragedy,
because life is pale without it.
we want the teeth, the screaming.
the survival
that comes with it.”
― Salma Deera, Letters From Medea