Aaron Pevitz

“A photograph can say “This is what it was.” Language can only say “This is what it was like.”
― Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!

“Only in a culture that privileged infallibility above all else could a man like President Invective rise to power—a man insulated since birth from any sense of accountability, raised in a pristine cocoon of inherited wealth to emerge pristine, dewy, wholly unsullied by those irksome mortal foibles, grief and doubt.”
― Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!

“double-consciousness, how Black people in America always have to be mindful of how racist white people see them. And how that applies to a lot of marginalized people, always having to see themselves through the eyes of the folks who hate them. And being an Iranian vaguely Muslim man in a country that hates those things, each of those things, and then also writing about martyrdom, obsessing honestly over what that word might mean for me in my own life or in my own death…It’s just hard not to think about, like, ‘what would a person who hates me think about this.’ ”
― Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!

“word for this: sonder. “The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.” Incredible, how naming something took nothing away from its stagger. Language could be totally impotent like that.”
― Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!