Marissa Lopez

“I wonder if there's an invisible string somewhere they can carry my message to Bà Ngoai, like a phone wire between the living, the dead, and the little fluttering being in between. Kumquat, our conduit. Maybe from the heavens, Bà Ngoai could lean down, blow all that misguided goodwill into the wind, where it would find its way to me, to my womb and to my baby boy. I almost feel her breath in the sunshine, and in it is the shudder of relief and love, both so wrapped up that I think there should be another word for the feeling entirely.”
― Thao Thai, Banyan Moon

“I think we're raised to believe that happiness is something we've been promised. That we all deserve to be happy. Which is why this really fucked-up thing that's happening to some of us is so hard to accept. Because we're supposed to be happy.”
― Nikki Erlick, The Measure

“Her love is not flawless, a solitaire sparkling from a smooth hand. Rather it reminds me of a geode - rough and worn by time yet cracked, occasionally, to reveal a vibrant cluster of crystals.”
― Thao Thai, Banyan Moon

“thought about how, for so much of my life, I’d survived by staying quiet, making myself small enough to fly under the radar. I decided then that I no longer wanted to be quiet. I wanted to be loud and colorful and every piece of myself at any one time. As I lay there, I began to dream of”
― Andrés N. Ordorica, How We Named the Stars