Peter Gehred

“Martha,” he said afterwards, lying next to me. “Everything is broken and messed up and completely fine. That is what life is. It’s only the ratios that change. Usually on their own. As soon as you think that’s it, it’s going to be like this forever, they change again.” That is what life was, and how it continued for three years after that. The ratios changing on their own, broken, completely fine, a holiday, a leaking pipe, new sheets, happy birthday, a technician between nine and three, a bird flew into the window, I want to die, please, I can’t breathe, I think it’s a lunch thing, I love you, I can’t do this anymore, both of us thinking it would be like that forever.”
― Meg Mason, Sorrow and Bliss

“While in the past the newsreaders would speak in clam voices conveying reassurance and balanced consideration. Now they spoke in shrill tones that created panic in a viewers heart. They created the disaster before it had occurred.”
― Kiran Desai, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

“You did not rescue me,” Casiopea replied. “I opened that chest. Besides, I wasn’t a princess in a tower. I knew I’d get away one way or another, and I was not waiting for a god to liberate me.”
― Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Gods of Jade and Shadow

“Sorrow and desolation have their songs as well as joy and peace. Slaves sing more to make themselves happy than to express their happiness”
― David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom