Ayo > Recent Status Updates

“I wrote versions of her in my books but I never wrote her.”

🥰

“She loved me enough to let me go. “


❤️

“Pain turns women into birds. I don’t want to turn to a bird.”

I have so many thoughts about this book and will make time to write a detailed review. I have never disliked and liked a book all at the same time in a while. Also I still don’t get the hype 🫠🥰

“I lean into the front and kiss him and I tell him I love him.

And he says it back but he has disconnected.

I shut the door and he pulls away.”

💔

“I’ve noticed that about people who had stable childhoods.

They like to create their own problems.”

😆

“The conversation started quietly enough with him saying what he often said to me which was that I bottled up my feelings until they came out like a fire hose and if I didn’t withhold so much we could reach each other better.”

❤️

“There’s a benefit to systematizing healthcare. To treating everyone like they are everyone else. But there’s also a cost.”

“. . .But survival is not primarily an act of individual will of course, it’s an act of collective will.”


🥹❤️😍

“Most human experiences are processes not events.”

🎯

“Imagining someone as more than human does much the same work as imagining them as less than human.”

😍❤️🥰🎯

“Pain is in the body. It leaves no trace for the historian unless complaints about it are recorded.”

❤️

“We are powerful enough to light the world at night, to artificially refrigerate food, to leave earth’s atmosphere and orbit it from out of space, but we cannot save those we love from suffering.”

🥰❤️😍

“You knew I’d write a book about you someday.”

What is this honey???? Y’all hype anything.

Our narrator is such a little BIRD. Don’t come for me. 🫠🤗

“The myth is that there isn’t enough time. There’s plenty of time. There isn’t enough focus with the time you have. “

❤️

“When you truly look at yourself, you will find you won’t have time to focus on other people’s business.

Your life will keep you busy enough.

Being overly involved in the lives of others can be a sign that you are neglecting or avoiding your own life. You have so many things that require your attention.”

🎯

“Learn to manage your energy not match someone else’s energy.”

“Allow people to leave when they say they want to go.”


OMG!!! Love me some Nedra!!! She always gets me right 😍❤️🥰

“When you push against changes that are naturally occurring, you delay progress.”


Get me together Nedra!!! 🎯🥰

“Our only obligation to each other should be a vast oceanic affection.

Our only assumption must be that everybody else’s life is more meaningful than our own. That is the only way to encounter the other.

The rest is window dressing. “ ❤️

I LOVED so many things about this book. I wont be surprised if this wins the 2026 Booker.The only deterrent is that it is centered on a male protagonist like Flesh.

“You will not come to a final room where you’ll have to face yourself.

This is already yourself. It is already talking to you. And this is the only language it knows. The language you used to know.”

😍❤️🥰

“I believe it’s the role of women to cover up the truth of mortality. And that’s a lot of work. . . Is it any wonder we might want to outsource that?”

😍🎯❤️

This is a highly brilliant, smart and beautiful book. It takes a lot of skill to put beauty and intellectualism in the same bottle. I like how the prose randomly detours into the poetic. It’s so BEAUTIFUL!!! 🥹 what a writer!!!

“We talk endlessly about sexual identity but isn’t sex more an escape from the self?

For that to be the case one needs to have a discernible personality to escape from. And many don’t - which why they are so bad at sex itself.”

🥰❤️😍

OMG!!! That moment you’ve always thought of something and someone expresses it PERFECTLY!!! 😍🎯

“I am a person. You are an absence. Ultimately I will like to fuck nothing.”

😍🤣🥰

“Those who wish to sing always find a song.”

I agree with the gripes folks have with this book - it’s leans too much into philosophy and less into story but I LOVE IT.

It’s saying something distinct. And the concept is mind blowing. 😍

I can’t stand Justine Pearce though 🤣😌

This would make a good miniseries on HBO. Also there’s a lot of room to morph it for TV 😍

“Worry gives a small thing a big shadow.”

😍❤️🥰

“When damaged men have money and influence, that’s a problem for the whole world.

It can be also be a problem for their companies and stakeholders. “


🎯

“All children were born strange before they learn to smooth down the edges.”

🎯

“She had plants, pets.

But the thing about plants and pets is that eventually they left you, died before you.

And what she needed was someone who would stick around.”

🥰

“There we were- two people trying to make a connection in this vast lonely world but the signals got scrambled.

That’s when I understood that we don’t know how to talk to each other anymore. “

🎯

“What right do I have to write about a war from my armchair?

Why must a country be bombed before we care about it?”

😍❤️🥰

“Waiting for a response can drive you to distraction. Too much depends on the outcome. It is always best to already be working on the next thing. . . “


🎯

“I buy alcohol on credit card and it’s the only thing I use the credit card for.”

Okay - I have enough to say I like what Kennard is doing here. Black Bag asks can connection happen when someone is hiding? Also how we use various roles we play in society to hide and become anonymous.

Brilliant 😍