Sal Manzo

“Was that what made him a European? To want to have his story told once more, passed down the line to another eager listener who would, in his time, disregard its lesson and repeat his own suffering? Ah, how he loved tradition.”
― Clive Barker, The Damnation Game

“You do devour. Isn’t that what we’re talking about? A war of annexation.” “It’s not—devour would be if we were xenophobes or genocides, if we didn’t bring new territories into the Empire.” Into the world. Shift the pronunciation of the verb, and Three Seagrass could have been saying if we didn’t make new territories real, but Mahit knew what she meant: all the ways that being part of Teixcalaan gave a planet or a station prosperity. Economic, cultural—take a Teixcalaanli name, be a citizen. Speak poetry.”
― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire

“Life is seldom perfect, and everyone knows the sometime necessity of a compromise. But if we accept the necessity—the desirability—of offering up the lives of others to improve our own, then we have already lost.”
― C.N. Lester, Trans Like Me: Conversations for All of Us

“The hypocrisy in telling young people who are genuinely desperate for treatment that it’s too risky for them to have it—even after they have jumped through so many safeguarding hoops—while sanctioning, encouraging, other kinds of risk distresses me. It has everything to do with cultural norms, and nothing to do with keeping children safe while still allowing them their autonomy. We have to move forward from the idea that it is somehow a shame, a failure, for a child to grow up to be trans. We have to start approaching this subject with young people’s best interests at heart, not our own concerns and judgments about how we would want our children to conform. Being trans is not a fate anyone needs saving from. But everyone, every child, needs to be loved for who they truly are, without conditions.”
― C.N. Lester, Trans Like Me: Conversations for All of Us