“We all know how loving ends. But I want to fall in love with the world anyway, to let it crack me open. I want to feel what there is to feel while I am here.”
― The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
― The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
“Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. (...) You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.”
― Looking for Alaska
― Looking for Alaska
“The name Hitler does not offend a black South African because Hitler is not the worst thing a black South African can imagine. Every country thinks their history is the most important, and that’s especially true in the West. But if black South Africans could go back in time and kill one person, Cecil Rhodes would come up before Hitler. If people in the Congo could go back in time and kill one person, Belgium’s King Leopold would come way before Hitler. If Native Americans could go back in time and kill one person, it would probably be Christopher Columbus or Andrew Jackson. I”
― Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
― Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
“I'll never again speak to many of the people who loved me into this moment, just as you will never speak to many of the people who loved you into your now. So we raise a glass to them--and hope that perhaps somewhere, they are raising a glass to us.”
― The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
― The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
“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.”
― Looking for Alaska
― Looking for Alaska
Ahmed’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Ahmed’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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