Ian Onion

“According to the police, of course, our community was a rogue community. It was we who were the enemy, we who were the terrorists, the civilian terrorists, the associates of terrorists or simply individuals suspected of being but not yet discovered to be terrorists. That being the case, and understood by both parties to be the case, the only time you’d call the police in my area would be if you were going to shoot them, and naturally they would know this and so wouldn’t come.”
― Anna Burns, Milkman

“You've got to face facts and the fact is life is a joke, a fucking bad joke, or, no, a bad fucking joke. There's no point taking it seriously because whatever happens, and I mean whatever the fuck, the punch line is the same: you go out horizontally. You see the point? No fucking point.”
― Jeet Thayil, Narcopolis

“I’ve only ever known myself in song, between notes, in that place where language won’t suffice but the drums might, might speak for us, might speak for what is on our hearts.”
― Caleb Azumah Nelson, Small Worlds

“Their eyes searched silently for any sign of life, waiting for some flock of egrets to slingshot out from the bushes, waiting for a single mulletfish to brush the river’s crest, even hoping for a distant whiff of cow dung. Even shit has life in it, after all.”
― Kevin Jared Hosein, Hungry Ghosts