Ali

“All of us have had the experience of a sudden joy that came when nothing in the world had forewarned us of its coming-- a joy so thrilling that if it was born of misery we remembered even the misery with tenderness.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, A Guide for Grown-Ups: Essential Wisdom from the Collected Works of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“This must be the hardest bit about being a spy, she thought. The emotion people store in you, like a bad investment. You feel like you are robbing people of something.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“Their presumed, reliable fraudulence is what makes their presence, to the mourners, necessary. Because grief, at its worst, is unreal. And it calls for a surreal response.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“For many years, we didn't realize our parents had accents, that their voices sounded different to unkind American ears. All we heard was home.”
― Roxane Gay