Notebook
“Each one of us continues to carry the heart of each self we’ve ever been, at every stage along the way, and a chaos of everything good and rotten. And we have to carry this weight all alone, through each day that we live. We try to be as nice as we can to the people we love, but we alone support the weight of ourselves.” —Goodbye Tsugumi Banana Yoshimoto
“What is this, grabbing at my heart, like it means something? What gives this pretend place so much power over me? —The Overstory Richard Powers
It was an endless year that was sometimes hot and sometimes unbearable, and I sometimes threw open my windows and let music flood the streets and I sometimes watched people glance up with a knowing smile, the way we do when a sermon calls us home, or calls us back to something better or away from somewhere worse. —They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us Hanif Abdurraqib
“Maybe because when I’m home, I’m relaxed and have my guard down. Or I’ve just been working too hard. Anyway, every once in a while, when I’m just waking up, or when I come home tired and sit down with a cup of tea, it’s like the two worlds intersect and I see them, still living here like they used to.”—Dead-End Memories: Stories Banana Yoshimoto
“You want to ask the universe what everyone else wants to ask the universe. Why are we born, why do we die, why anything has to be. And all the universe has to say in reply is: I don’t know, arsehole, stop asking. The Afterlife is as confusing as the Before Death, the In Between is as arbitrary as the Down There. So we make up stories because we’re afraid of the dark.” —The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida Shehan Karunatilaka
