Emilia

“Sometimes he wakes so far from himself that he can’t even remember who he is. “Where am I?” he asks, desperate, and then, “Who am I? Who am I?”
And then he hears, so close to his ear that it is as if the voice is originating inside his own head, Willem’s whispered incantation. “You’re Jude St. Francis. You are my oldest, dearest friend. You’re the son of Harold Stein and Julia Altman. You’re the friend of Malcolm Irvine, of Jean-Baptiste Marion, of Richard Goldfarb, of Andy Contractor, of Lucien Voigt, of Citizen van Straaten, of Rhodes Arrowsmith, of Elijah Kozma, of Phaedra de los Santos, of the Henry Youngs.
“You’re a New Yorker. You live in SoHo. You volunteer for an arts organization; you volunteer for a food kitchen.
“You’re a swimmer. You’re a baker. You’re a cook. You’re a reader. You have a beautiful voice, though you never sing anymore. You’re an excellent pianist. You’re an art collector. You write me lovely messages when I’m away. You’re patient. You’re generous. You’re the best listener I know. You’re the smartest person I know, in every way. You’re the bravest person I know, in every way.
“You’re a lawyer. You’re the chair of the litigation department at Rosen Pritchard and Klein. You love your job; you work hard at it.
“You’re a mathematician. You’re a logician. You’ve tried to teach me, again and again.
“You were treated horribly. You came out on the other end. You were always you.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Oh bell-dumb heart, it makes you a fool to think you were ever closer to opening up the world — to art, to breaking it apart — than those who came before. But knowing that can't make you read or breathe more slowly. Since when did you listen to anyone? To give up on motivation is to give up on the work we do with alphabet and light. It's not enough to hunt or haunt our parents' hearts; we must occupy our own.”
― Ander Monson, Letter to a Future Lover: Marginalia, Errata, Secrets, Inscriptions, and Other Ephemera Found in Libraries

“If the end of one's youth is a thin slice of cheese I ate mine standing in that room. I was there because I was hungry. That's all.”
― Eileen Myles, Chelsea Girls

“There are accepted revolutions, revolutions which are called revolutions; there are refused revolutions, which are called riots.”
― Víctor Hugo, Les Misérables