Maren Reimer

“Because to remember is to fill the present with the past, which meant that the cost of remembering anything, anything at all, is life itself. We murder ourselves, he thought, by remembering.”
― Ocean Vuong, The Emperor of Gladness

“You see, carrots become bright orange because it’s so dark in the ground. They make their own light because the sun never reaches that far—like those fish in the ocean who glow from nothing? So when you eat it, you take in the carrot’s will to go upward. To heaven.”
― Ocean Vuong, The Emperor of Gladness

“You deserve someone who will love you in all your damaged glory.”
― Raphael Bob-Waksberg, Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory: Stories

“You once told me that the human eye is god's loneliest creation. How so much of the world passes through the pupil and still it holds nothing. The eye, alone in its socket, doesn't even know there's another one, just like it, an inch away, just as hungry, as empty.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous