Amri Hakim

“When asked about the difficulties of sculpture, Michelangelo said, “It is easy. You just chip away all the stone that isn’t David.” It’s simple to cut things out of a life. You break up with a shitty partner, quit eating bread, delete the Twitter app. You cut it out, and the shape of what’s actually killing you clarifies a little. The whole Abrahamic world invests itself in this promise: Don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t fuck or steal or kill, and you’ll be a good person. Eight of the ten commandments are about what thou shalt not. But you can live a whole life not doing any of that stuff and still avoid doing any good. That’s the whole crisis. The rot at the root of everything. The belief that goodness is built on a constructed absence, not-doing. That belief corrupts everything, has everyone with any power sitting on their hands. A rich man goes a whole day without killing a single homeless person and so goes to sleep content in his goodness. In another world, he’s buying crates of socks and Clif bars and tents, distributing them in city centers. But for him, abstinence reigns.”
― Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!

“At the time, he'd thought to himself, quite philosophically, that getting older was nothing but a series of slow deaths of the people we once were, and how, with each death of our past selves, those held memories of past lives also died. Not forgotten, perhaps, but withered and lifeless. Colorless. Muted by time, made insignificant by the damning present and a relentless, bullying future.”
― Philip Fracassi, The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre

“A long life for loneliness. A brief life for companionship.”
― Sri Rahayu Mohd Yusop, Saltwater Society

“I look awful don’t I.
No you look like my Ma.”
― Anne Carson, Red Doc>