Niswat

“I don’t know the plan, I say. I wish there was one, I say. But there’s only trying to find more work. There’s only hoping that it adds up to enough. At what point, says my mother, is it time to cut your losses? At what point is it time to give up on this whole dream thing? I don’t … I start to say but don’t know what she’s asking. What dream? I ask.”
― Lynn Steger Strong, Want

“That what my students do need—an obliteration of the same systems I grew up in, a burning down and re-creation of the spaces that I relied on all these years to keep me safe—I can’t do and don’t know how to.”
― Lynn Steger Strong, Want

“This woman sighs this big, long sigh that I think is supposed to be a sort of compliment-slash-show-of-solidarity between us. I know that if I were to sit with her by ourselves and talk a long time I’d probably like her. My quadrilingual friend is kind and brilliant and exacting and I trust she likes this woman because she is too. But I don’t have the space to sit and talk with her, to listen to and try to like her, so I sit and I allow myself to hate her, because I’m tired and it’s easy.”
― Lynn Steger Strong, Want

“At least with hate you know what you are getting. Love like that, you forget sometimes it's not love, that it's empty, all words and performance, and still sometimes you grab at it, thinking maybe it will give what love's supposed to give.”
― Lynn Steger Strong, Want