Brian Martin

“Death is the ultimate source of both the tragedy and the beauty of a human life. Moreover, death's tragedy is the source of life's beauty and vice versa. Although it is better that we are mortal, it is nevertheless a shame that we have to die. To die brings to a pointless end the involvements that make up our lives. And yet without that pointless end those involvements themselves might have no point. They would only be part of the endless passing show. They would be unable to touch us. That is to say, without the beauty of the moments that we are granted in this life, our death would be no tragedy; and without the tragedy of death, those moments would have no beauty. In this sense, as in the other senses we have discussed, death is the deepest and most important fact about us. To be human is to die and, more importantly, to know that one will die throughout one's life, even when (or especially when) we go to great lengths to avoid that knowledge.”
― Todd May , Death

“How does one define a “simple” memory anyway? Is there even such a thing when it comes to the human condition? Consider the albatross that landed on the platform during her run this morning. It’s a mere flicker of thought in her mind that will one day be cast out into that wasteland of oblivion where forgotten memories die. And yet it contains the smell of the sea. The white, wet feathers of the bird glistening in the early sun. The pounding of her heart from the exertion of the run. The cold slide of sweat down her sides and the burn of it in her eyes. Her wondering in that moment where the bird considered home in the unending sameness of the sea. When every memory contains a universe, what does simple even mean?”
― Blake Crouch, Recursion

“There in the hospital Billy was having an adventure very common among people without power in times of war: he was trying to prove to a willfully deaf and blind enemy that he is interesting to hear and see.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“I want a dyke for president. I want a person with AIDS for president and I want a fag for vice president and I want someone with no health insurance and I want someone who grew up in a place where the earth is so saturated with toxic waste that they didn’t have a choice about getting leukemia. I want a president that had an abortion at sixteen and I want a candidate who isn’t the lesser of two evils and I want a president who lost their last lover to AIDS, who still sees that in their eyes every time they lay down to rest, who held their lover in their arms and knew they were dying. I want a president with no air-conditioning, a president who has stood in line at the clinic, at the DMV, at the welfare office, and has been unemployed and laid off and sexually harassed and gaybashed and deported. I want someone who has spent the night in the tombs and had a cross burned on their lawn and survived rape. I want someone who has been in love and been hurt, who respects sex, who has made mistakes and learned from them. I want a Black woman for president. I want someone with bad teeth and an attitude, someone who has eaten that nasty hospital food, someone who crossdresses and has done drugs and been in therapy. I want someone who has committed civil disobedience. And I want to know why this isn’t possible. I want to know why we started learning somewhere down the line that a president is always a clown. Always a john and never a hooker. Always a boss and never a worker. Always a liar, always a thief, and never caught.”
― Zoe Leonard