Devon Proscia’s Reviews > Martyr! > Status Update

“You think there’s some nobility in being above anger?” Sang asked.
“Anger is a kind of fear. And fear saved you. When the world was all kneecaps and corners of coffee tables, fear kept you safe.”

“What I want to say is that I was happy. Not always, not even mostly. But I did know real, deep joy. Maybe everyone gets a certain amount to use up over a lifetime, and I just used my lifetime’s allotment especially quickly, with Leila. But I don’t think it was a tragedy, my life. Tragedies are relentless. Nobody could ask for more than what I’ve had.”

“If the mortal sin of the suicide is greed, to hoard stillness and calm for yourself while dispersing your riotous internal pain among all those who survive you, then the mortal sin of the martyr must be pride, the vanity, the hubris to believe not only that your death could mean more than your living, but that your death could mean more than death itself—which, because it is inevitable, means nothing.”

“It feels so American to discount dreams because they’re not built of objects, of things you can hold and catalogue and then put in a safe. Dreams give us voices, visions, ideas, mortal terrors, and departed beloveds. Nothing counts more to an individual, or less to an empire.”

“‘…Maybe part of it is just wanting my tiny little life to have something of scale. For the stakes to matter … For my having-lived to matter.’

Orkideh smiled, placed her hand on Cyrus’s…

‘We won’t grow old together, Cyrus. But can’t you feel this mattering? Right now? … It matters to me. Know that. It matters deeply.’”

“In Iran it was called taarof, the elaborate and almost entirely unspoken choreography of etiquette that directs every social interaction.”

“‘Expendable’ may seem a bad word to use to describe your own life, except I actually find it liberating. The way it vents away all pressure to become. How it asks only that you be.”

“…it’s lonely here in the future
with all our drugs and knowing…”