Alice Smith

“Jullian crossed his arms, almost defensively, but there was no heat behind it. “Animals have morality? That still sounds… primitive. Like pack survival instinct. What does that have to do with our laws? With people who give up their lives for strangers? That’s not instinct. That’s… irrational. It’s like a failure in the cost-benefit logic.”
Mira bent down and plucked a weed growing through the cracked cement, fingers patient. “That’s where something beautiful begins. Reason refines instinct. It doesn't erase it. When we act against our social nature, our mind remembers what our body once knew. A pull toward others. An ache when we ignore it.”
― Mason Carter, Her Name is Anarchy: a novella

“The mattress has not learned you are gone.
It still bends in the shape of you,
dips where your weight once settled,”
― Mason Carter, Saltwater & Smoke: Poems of Almosts, Goodbyes, and What We Leave Behind

“Mira nodded slowly, her cheek brushing his. “That takes us deeper, Jullian. Beneath the political structure lies something even more fundamental: the social relationship to the very materials of life. The food we eat. The soil we grow it in. The water we drink, the trees that breathe with us. Historically, these were held in common.”
― Mason Carter, Her Name is Anarchy: a novella

“Mira smiled, eyes crinkling at the corners. “That’s well put. Even Marx’s idea of the state ‘withering away’ still rests on centralization, on administration from above. And historically, that’s led to bureaucracy, elitism, and repression—counter-revolution in the name of revolution.”
― Mason Carter, Her Name is Anarchy: a novella