Hannah

“A culture of death denial. This denial takes many forms. Our obsession with youth, the creams and chemicals and detoxifying diets pushed by those who would sell the idea that the natural aging of our bodies is grotesque. Spending over $100 billion a year on anti-aging products as 3.1 million children under 5 starve to death. The denial manifests in our technology and buildings, which create the illusion that we have less in common with road kill than with the sleek lines of a MacBook.”
― Caitlin Doughty, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory

“By then Ramola had begun to see herself as asexual but would not admit this to her mum. She said she was impressed by Mum's vocabulary choice, and added she enjoyed the idea of sex like she enjoyed the idea of riding a bike, but both involved too much prep work, or leg work, as it were, and she was alright forgoing both for the forseeable.”
― Paul Tremblay, Survivor Song

“In that moment, she was not a rock but a girl. Not a fatherless, sisterless daughter, but a living, breathing, selfish creature who wanted. Who craved.”
― Claire Legrand

“The Khawla historian says the people of this planet were like a virus—multiplying endlessly, consuming every resource they could wrench from land and sky, acting as if all they could survey was theirs for the taking and the ruining. Every time their planet cried out, they ignored its pleas. Instead of curbing their wasteful desires—their fossil fuels and their petroleum-fueled lives—they simply expanded their settlements, moved to new places, plundered more ground, until their land could bear it no longer and erupted in fire. There were many among the young who had spoken the truth, who gave warning of what their future could hold, but on this planet, old men didn’t plan for futures they knew they wouldn’t be there to enjoy. They couldn’t see past themselves.”
― Samira Ahmed, A Universe of Wishes: A We Need Diverse Books Anthology