Chantal Tseng

“Champagne mixes with salt. Rain mixes with sea. Am I dead myself? How long have I been here and gone at once? I feel something inside my heart, something that reminds me of someone I used to know, long ago, in a city no one remembers but me. I feel old things running around this place, like we’re in the center of the smoke of a burning book of wonders, as though all the pages have gotten stuck together and now it’s a world of everything at once, a pitcher of water in my hands, a stand of trees somewhere in the middle of a desert, a bed of white linen sheets, above me the moon crescented, stars I don’t know, wine in a cup, smooth wet sand around me packed down, a cave, a tomb, a room, a rock rolling across the entrance, a stick made of old wood. And here, a country of claws, a mob of monsters. Look at them as we fly and look at us, all of us, the desperate desiring humans of this place, no longer. The story is shifting, things are changing. All is well and will be well.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, The Mere Wife

“She wanted to be herself again, to recover all that she had been obliged to give up in half a century of servitude that had doubtless made her happy but which, once her husband was dead, did not leave her even the vestiges of her identity.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

“Benny was from America, like most musicians at the Jasmine–a place called New Orleans. Cairo brought in people from all over. Some looking for work or drawn by stories of mechanical wonders and djinn. Benny and the others had come fleeing a thing called Jim Crow. They brought with them their hopes, their dreams, and their fantastic music.”
― P. Djèlí Clark , A Master of Djinn

“Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.”
― Mark Twain