Max

“She told me I had something in me I wasn't gonna be able to get out this time around. She told me I could handle it like a man. Die with it. But that I could also share it with my family. I could give it away over time. Even to strangers. It was some old dark leftover thing that stayed with our family. Some people get diseases passed down in their genes. Some people get red hair, green eyes. We got this old thing that hurts real fuckin bad, makes you mean. That's what you got. That's what your grandpa had in him. Be a man, she told me. Keep it to yourself.”
― Tommy Orange, There There

“How to read her coldness: She is preoccupied. She is unhappy. She is unhappy with you. You did something and now she’s unhappy, and you need to find out what it is so she will stop being unhappy. You talk to her. You are clear. You think you are clear. You say what you are thinking and you say it after thinking a lot, and yet when she repeats what you’ve said back to you nothing makes sense. Did you say that? Really? You can’t remember saying that or even thinking it, and yet she is letting you know that it was said, and you definitely meant it that way.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

“Sometimes love is not enough to keep a community together. There needs to be something more tangible, like fair housing, opportunities, and access to resources. Lifeboats and lifelines are not supposed to just be a way for us to get out. They should be ways to let us stay in and survive. And thrive.”
― Ibi Zoboi, Pride

“We are all wrong at some times and to some degree. A person who claims never to have been wrong is simply a person with a very convenient memory.”
― Patricia Roberts-Miller, Demagoguery and Democracy