Renee Godding

“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

“What I didn't know then: coming of age isn't something you can choreograph, and it doesn't happen all at once. You start the process; you stall; you regress; and then comes another growth spurt. Eventually, your path looks like a series of paw prints in the snow-layered, as if compelled by confusion or curiosity-that double back before veering off in the direction of destiny.”
― Tory Henwood Hoen, Before I Forget

“I’d imagined that the day he lost his memory was the real moment that death came for him, but as I watched the sun disappear over the years, I began to wonder whether this erasure was, in fact, a form of death for all of us. Who are we if not just a collection of memories locked in a container made of flesh and blood? If we ceased to exist in the memory of those closest to us, then how could we assume that we were as alive as we’d been before? It made me realise that, despite what people said about it, death was not so straightforward after all.”
― An Yu, Sunbirth