audrey’s Reviews > The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet > Status Update

He showed me that you could be crazy and still be human, still be valuable, and still be loved.

For me, finding hope is not some philosophical exercise or sentimental notion; it is a prerequisite to my survival.

But mostly, we had one another. That apartment… was designed for us to be in it together, to be in every part of life together. And we were. We loved one another with a ferocity that unnerved outsiders… I know I am romanticizing this past… but it was the first extended period of my adult life when I felt okay even some of the time, and so you’ll forgive me if I recall it with such fondness.

If Saunders lives long enough, Memphis will become the most beautiful city in the world just with the things Saunders built and lost.

I am thoughtful—full of thoughts, all the time, inescapably, exhaustingly. But I am also mindless—acting in accordance with default settings I either understand or examine.

I mostly tried to act like everyone else is acting, even as we all approached the precipice. We imagine other animals, as being without consciousness, mindlessly, following the leader to they-know-not-where, but in that construction, we sometimes forget that we are also animals.