Jaide

“We have on this earth what makes life worth living: April’s hesitation, the aroma of bread at dawn, a woman’s point of view about men, the works of Aeschylus, the beginning of love, grass on a stone, mothers living on a flute’s sigh and the invaders’ fear of memories.”
― Mahmoud Darwish, Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems

“This is presumably also why in the immediate wake of great disasters—a flood, a blackout, or an economic collapse—people tend to behave the same way, reverting to a rough-and-ready communism. However briefly, hierarchies and markets and the like become luxuries that no one can afford. Anyone who has lived through such a moment can speak to their peculiar qualities, the way that strangers become sisters and brothers and human society itself seems to be reborn. This is important, because it shows that we are not simply talking about cooperation. In fact, communism is the foundation of all human sociability. It is what makes society possible.”
― David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years

“Is it possible that the relationship between humanity and evil is similar to the relationship between the ocean and an iceberg floating on its surface? Both the ocean and the iceberg are made of the same material. That the iceberg seems separate is only because it is in a different form. In reality, it is but a part of the vast ocean.…”
― Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem

“She/I -- the dreamer -- cannot act as a principal in her own dream. She, the narrator of the table, is an easy accomplice. She sits quietly on the sidelines at the dance, waiting to be invited. The watcher has a bitter place in the world. She has so much yearning in her heart, so little acumen. Her loneliness is unbearable. Her unrequited longing calcified into her ventricles. Her silence welling up in her throat, all she can do now is gasp or sing for blood. She must quench her thirst for revenge. She must sound the sirens. She must rage out for being the obedient one, for being the repressed singer, for being that perfect Chinese girlhood too timorous to break the mold.”
― Marilyn Chin, Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen