Lexie

“Do you have this organ here?” Cyrus asked her, pointing at the base of his throat. “A doom organ that just pulses all the time? Pulses dread, every day, obstinately? Like it thinks there’s a panther behind the curtain ready to maul you, but there’s no panther and it turns out there’s no curtain either? That’s what I wanted to stop.”
― Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!

“But plant personhood itself is a concept as old as human culture. As we've already learned, Native philosophies from all corners of the globe often understand plants as relatives, or ancestors, or otherwise persons in their own right. It's not that plants are human, but that humans are just one kind of person, as are animals. Personhood means one has agency and volition, and the right to exist for their own sake.”
― Zoë Schlanger, The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth

“What was the point if every road led back to the same shame?”
― Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!

“We’re all on the side of a mountain shocked by how fast it’s gotten dark; the only question is whether we’re with people we love or not. There is no other thing—no belief or religion or faith—there is just that. Just the knowledge that when we finally close our eyes, someone will be there to watch over us as we head out into that great, soaring night.”
― Sebastian Junger, In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife