Mcgary

“I know that I stopped thinking about extreme grief as the sole vehicle for great art when the grief started to take people with it. And I get it. The tortured artist is the artist that gets remembered for all time, particularly if they if they either perish or overcome. But the truth is that so many of us are stuck in the middle. So many of us begin tortured and end tortured, with only brief bursts of light in between, and I'd rather have average art and survival than miracles that come at the cost of someone's life.”
― Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us: Essays

“I like to read because
it kills me.”
― Mary Ruefle

“People, the people we really love, where did they come from? What did we do to deserve them?”
― Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures