Kin

“Many objects outlive people—this thought has often occurred to me when I see in a museum an eighteenth-century pianoforte or a twelfth-century sword or a bowl from 500 BCE. All of Vincent’s belongings and all of James’s belongings have outlived them; not a single item has left our care. There are Vincent’s many paintings hung around the house. There is James’s collection of pocket watches on a shelf. Everywhere I turn in the house there are objects: their meanings reside in the memories connected to them; the memories limn the voids, which cannot be filled by the objects.”
― Yiyun Li, Things in Nature Merely Grow

“I don’t want an end point to my sorrow. The death of a child is not a heat wave or a snowstorm, nor an obstacle race to rush through and win, nor an acute or chronic illness to recover from. What is grief but a word, a shortcut, a simplification of something much larger than that word?”
― Yiyun Li, Things in Nature Merely Grow

“Life, in an absolute sense, is worth living, just as art is worth pursuing, science is worth exploring, justice is worth seeking. However, the fact that something is worth doing doesn't always mean a person is endowed with the capacity to do it, or that a person, once endowed with that capacity, can retain it. The gap between worth doing and being able to do is where aspiration dwells for the young and decline lies in wait for the old.”
― Yiyun Li, Things in Nature Merely Grow

“ฤดูร้อนก็เหมือนปีใหม่, เหมือนสงกรานต์, เหมือนความรัก, เหมือนภราดรภาพ มันมีไว้สำหรับคนทุกๆ คน”
― อิศรา อมันตกุล, พระเจ้าคนละองค์