Adan Anwar

“My name is a song I sing myself to remind me of my mothers voice. My name does not bend to your tongue, does not stop at your borders. My name is not a flight risk. I sing my name to remind me of a time where our language was in our blood. A time when our mothers were in our hair, a time when vowels came from the same deep place as laughter, and the pit of thirst was not so wide. Oh beloved, I walk the gauntlet of life barefoot and bound, clawing at the hills for the voice I left at the house where my mother and her own were born. I gather words like stones to feed my children, they thirst for words that sound like the shape of their eyes. Where oh beloved, where will I find such words?”
― Zeyn Joukhadar, The Map of Salt and Stars

“Thomas Edison's last words were "It's very beautiful over there". I don't know where there is, but I believe it's somewhere, and I hope it's beautiful.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

“Stories are powerful,” he said, “but gather too many of the words of others in your heart, and they will drown out your own. Remember that.”
― Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar, The Map of Salt and Stars

“I realized something sitting there while Jimmy Dill was being killed at Holman prison. After working for more than twenty-five years, I understood that I don't do what I do because it's required or necessary or important. I don't do it because I have no choice. I do what I do because I'm broken, too.”
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy