Renee Godding

“Grief is a running tap, a closed cabinet, chopsticks touching bowls, teeth chewing. I’d never imagined that would be the case. I hadn’t expected it to slip into everything.”
― An Yu, Sunbirth

“As people grow up, childhood becomes foggy, but no matter who you ask, they always remember the weather. They forget the locations of their schools, the names of their best friends, the colours of their houses, but never the weather. Perhaps it is the tactility of air touching skin that makes it impossible to forget. We remember it with our bones, our muscles, our skin. So even though I had been living with the cold for over half of my life, if I just closed my eyes, I could still feel the full sun blazing over Five Poems Lake.”
― An Yu, Sunbirth

“There's something Fascist , don't you see, in the idea that your genes are your story?
I have learnt this: there are no border guards at the chambers of your heart. It's only the immigration officers who might care, where your mother was born, what passport your father carried.
If history grants you the chance, be free of all that, that's my advice”
― Sarah Moss, Ripeness

“Romantic love was a clear-cut institution, bolstered by orthodoxy and ritual. When a man lost his wife, it was expected that his world would unravel. But friendship… friendship was a wilderness with no guide. There were no courting rituals one might follow to pursue it, and little sympathy for the gut-wrenching horror of its loss.”
― Sheldon Costa, The Great Work