jen

“There should be no room in your life for regret. If in the moment of doing you felt clarity, you felt certainty, then why feel regret later?” She”
― Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing

“I have measured my life with coffee spoons and do I dare to eat a peach?' 'DO I DARE DISTURB THE UNIVERSE?”
― Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

“The ethnic literary project has always been a humanist project in which nonwhite writers must prove they are human beings who feel pain. Will there be a future where I, on the page, am simply I, on the page, and not I, proxy for a whole ethnicity, imploring you to believe we are human beings who feel pain? I don’t think, therefore I am—I hurt, therefore I am. Therefore, my books are graded on a pain scale. If it’s 2, maybe it’s not worth telling my story. If it’s 10, maybe my book will be a bestseller.”
― Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning

“Remember you are water. Of course you leave salt trails. Of course you are crying. Flow. P.S. If there happens to be a multitude of griefs upon you, individual and collective, or fast and slow, or small and large, add equal parts of these considerations: that the broken heart can cover more territory. that perhaps love can only be as large as grief demands. that grief is the growing up of the heart that bursts boundaries like an old skin or a finished life. that grief is gratitude. that water seeks scale, that even your tears seek the recognition of community. that the heart is a front line and the fight is to feel in a world of distraction. that death might be the only freedom. that your grief is a worthwhile use of your time. that your body will feel only as much as it is able to. that the ones you grieve may be grieving you. that the sacred comes from the limitations. that you are excellent at loving.”
― Adrienne Maree Brown, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds