Crystal

“How much of my mother's life I missed because I was a child”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“Once she had believed that connection meant sameness, consensus, harmony. Having everything in common. And now she understood that the opposite was true: that connection was more valuable—more remarkable—for the fact of differences. Friendship didn’t require blunting the richness of yourself to find common ground. Sometimes it was that, but it was also appreciating another person, in all their particularity.”
― Rachel Khong, Real Americans

“The tricky thing about giving opinions is that sometimes they cost you more than you wanted to spend.”
― Stacey Lee, The Downstairs Girl

“Ikept the book for the title, for how it was spelled. Beautyful. I had no idea why that spelling was chosen, but I liked it because it kept the beauty intact. It wasn’t swallowed, killed off with an i to make a whole new word. It was solid; it was still there, so much of it that it couldn’t fit into a new word, so much fullness. You got a better sense of exactly what was causing that fullness. Beauty. I wanted to be as whole as that word.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji