Kumar Shashwat

“There is so much I want to tell you, Ma. I was once foolish enough to believe knowledge would clarify, but some things are so gauzed behind layers of syntax and semantics, behind days and hours, names forgotten, salvaged and shed, that simply knowing the wound exists does nothing to reveal it.
I don't know what I'm saying. I guess what I mean is that sometimes I don't know what or who we are. Days I feel like a human being, while other days I feel more like a sound. I touch the world not as myself but as an echo of who I was. Can you hear me yet? Can you read me?”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Ma. You once told me that memory is a choice. But if you were god, you'd know it's a flood.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Whenever I asked her to tell me what happened up there, Naomi would say no one who has been to space could ever describe it to someone who hasn’t.”
― Laura Lam, Goldilocks

“To be or not to be. That is the question. A question, yes, but not a choice.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous