I think this particular reading challenge ceased being A THING years ago, but I enjoy it, so let’s do this!
Below you’ll find my favorite quotes from all the books I inhaled in 2019. “Quotes” is a bit generous, seeing as I didn’t always exercise discipline with the copy and paste buttons; some of these are more like excerpts. And that’s okay! The only rule is that THERE ARE NO RULES. I mean, that’s about where we’re at now, right?
Spoilers and trigger warnings abound, so proceed with caution.
- Everything Grows by Aimee Herman (2019)
Last night, Aggie said that we are onions. Always unpeeling, making people and ourselves cry as we unwrap. I have so many more layers, James. I feel like I’m just starting to unravel and see what has been hiding in me. What was hiding in you? Were there things you were afraid to unwrap?
I feel like your mother is a warm hug wrapped up inside a human being.
“Audre Lorde said something really beautiful about that,” Flor said. “A different book than what you’re reading. I’ll have to give to you. She talked about the words we don’t yet have and the power of what happens when we find them.”
“So how do I find my words?”
“Keep reading. Keep searching. You and your words will find one another,” Flor said.“You’re lucky. You don’t have to make some grand announcements that you’re straight. Everyone just assumes it already.”
“I became a woman at the Freehold Raceway Mall. Can my life get any more humiliating?”
“Dear Kurt,” Aggie paused. “What does it feel like to be gone but still able to speak? Even in your death, you make music. We rip up old flannels to remember you, but all we really need to do is press play. Sew thread into each square and knit them together as you scream ‘Pennyroyal Tea.’ Watch as shirts turn into a blanket to remind us how to stay warm as you call out ‘Lithium’ and you came as you are. There is no such thing as a separation of deaths. I believe we all head into the same place, floating and filling up the air with our memories. Say hello to my mother, please. Tell James he had more friends than he ever knew. I’ll keep playing your music to keep you down here as you sing along above me.”
- A People’s Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers edited by Victor LaValle (2019)
Everybody needs books, Molly figured. No matter where they live, how they Love, what they believe, whom they want to kill. We all want books.
(“The Bookstore at the End of America” by Charlie Jane Anders)Wall to keep the empire safe: strrrrrong empire, empire with mightiest military in the world, empire made of blood and theft, human and land. Before the wall was even finished the empire began to strip rights, silence certain people, keep others sparking in their skins of distrust. But most of the inhabitants paid attention to other things, shiny things, scandals. It would pass, hadn’t it always? White folks had short memories.
(“The Wall” by Lizz Huerta)The Head Librarian was called the Needle. She’d been memorizing the universe since time’s diaper days, and I never knew her real name. She was, back then, in charge of rare things from all over the world. Her collection included books like the Firfol and the Gutenbib, alongside manuscripts from authors like Octavia the Empress and Ursula Major.
(“Read After Burning” by Maria Dahvana Headley)It is crucial to remember that life, when it is long, is full of goodbyes.
(“Read After Burning” by Maria Dahvana Headley)You are the amen of my family, and I am the in the beginning of yours. This story is the prayer, or one of them. This story says you can live through anything and that when it is time to go, when the entire world goes dark, then you go together, holding on to one another’s hands, and you whisper the memory of birds and bees and the names of those you loved. When it is not time to go, though, this story says you rise.
(“Read After Burning” by Maria Dahvana Headley)This is what I whisper to you now, so that you will carry the story of the library, so that you will know how we made magic and how we made books out of burdens. This is to teach you how to transform loss into literature, and love into a future. It is to teach you how to make a book that will endure burning.
(“Read After Burning” by Maria Dahvana Headley)“Oh no,” Sid whispered, an hour later, and handed me his phone. “No,” I said, and shut my eyes. And breathed. Prince had just been added to the Filter, the official government list of artists who could not be listened to. […]
Prince was pretty much the only music Sid and I adored equally. Prince and Sade, but she’d been Filtered for years, along with every other female singer.
(“It Was Saturday Night, I Guess That Makes It All Right” by Sam J. Miller)Nayima imagined what he saw: an old gray-haired black woman with a walking stick, face brittle, eyes bright. This was not the person he had expected to kill him today, if he’d even bothered to imagine that he might die.
(“Attachment Disorder” by Tananarive Due)Y’all, the first baby born to the Federation of Free Peoples was gonna be one incredible brown-ass baby.
(“O.1” by Gabby Rivera)Dragons love them some collard greens, see. Especially with hot sauce.
(“Give Me Cornbread or Give Me Death” by N. K. Jemisin)Yun exhales, and a burst of flame exits her mouth, making Michael yelp and recoil. she feels the inside of her throat blister from the heat of her fire, and she relishes the sensation, how the pain makes her feel both powerful and alive.
she should have become a monster a long time ago.
(“What You Sow” by Kai Cheng Thom ) - Whose Boat Is This Boat?: Comments That Don’t Help in the Aftermath of a Hurricane by The Staff of the Late Show with Stephen Colbert (2018)
- A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo by Jill Twiss and E.G. Keller (2018)
- The Raven’s Tale by Cat Winters (2019)
“I just snuck out to leave shoes for the girl, so she won’t keep making these charcoal tracks. I worried she might be your muse.”
I snort at her assumption and scratch the back of my neck.“I write of romance and epic adventures, Rose. If a muse of mine were to step into the world, it would appear in the elegant form of Calliope, a writing tablet in hand.”
Rose frowns.“I know what it’s like to be haunted by dark muses, Edgar. My life began in the same manner as yours, remember?”“I’m the best part of you, Edgar Poe.”
“The kindest thing you can do for the dead,” says the young man who requested the kiss, “is to weave their names into art.”
- Red-Blooded American Male: Photographs by Robert Trachtenberg (2016)
Though you’re only seeing the one shot, here’s how my day with [Will] Arnett broke down:
Shot One
Me: “Will you put on this strapless gown?”
Arnett: “Yes.”
Me: “Thanks, the color really works with your eyes.”
Shot Two
Me: “Will you cry at a window with mascara running down your face?”
Arnett: “Yes.”
Me: “More hysterical, please.”
Shot Three
Me: “Will you put on these fishnets?”
Arnett: “Yes.”
Me: (Eternally grateful)Member of the House of Representative, [Brian] Sims is the first openly gay elected state legislator in Pennsylvania history. He is also an accomplished attorney and gets smart, legible tattoos, like the quote from Benjamin Franklin pictured here. Another memorable quote came from Sims himself during a heated floor debate with his colleagues over personal choice and religious freedom. “Each of us put out hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. We did not place our hands on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible.” We need this guy.
I was able to talk to [Bob] Saget on the phone before the shoot about what I wanted to do: “A hooker dressed as a giant rabbit is passed out next to you in a cheap motel bed. There’s booze, condoms, lube, cash, and the pitiful realization of what you’ve just done.” Without a moment’s hesitation he replied, “Sounds good. Do you need me to bring any of that?”
- Man-Eaters, Volume 1 (#1-4) by Chelsea Cain and Kate Niemczyk (2019)
I’m not scared, if that’s what you’re thinking.
Before the Toxoplasmosis X mutations, and the Global Hormone Initiative, women used to get their period all the time.
They just walked around…
…bleeding.
It was pretty bad ass. - Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand (2018)
Theirs was not a world that was often kind to women. And if Deidre had decided to sell her soul for a bit of comfort, an illusion of safety, power she had long been denied?
Well, thought Val mutinously, maybe that’s the world’s fault.
Maybe these monsters are what they deserve.“Why do the monsters eat girls?” she asked at last. Her voice sounded small.
When Marion didn’t answer, Zoey turned on her side to face her. “Marion?”
“Because,” Marion answered, looking beyond Zoey to the sea, “when a predator hunts, it seeks out the vulnerable. The desperate.”
Zoey’s laugh was bitter. “Oh, and we poor delicate girls are vulnerable and desperate, is that what you’re saying?”
“What I’m saying,” Marion said, now looking right at Zoey, her gray eyes bright, “is that girls hunger. And we’re taught, from the moment our brains can take it, that there isn’t enough food for us all.”Marion couldn’t imagine a God like the one she’d grown up hearing about – some man sitting in the clouds, maneuvering the pieces of the world to suit his whims because he, of course, knows best.
But she could imagine a God in the shape of an island crowned with trees, brooding in the middle of a black sea.“Screw that book,” said Val. “It was written by men.” She held out her free hand to Marion. “We’re rewriting it.”
- A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing: The Incarceration of African American Women from Harriet Tubman to Sandra Bland by DaMaris B. Hill (2019)
The afflicted pray for healing—just as hungry people pray for bread, but when has God ever sent bread? In my recollection of the scriptures, God has always sent a woman.
In the pre-emancipated South of 1856, there was a $40,000 reward offered for Harriet Tubman’s capture. “Dead or alive,” the ads stated. In 2017, that $40,000 in U.S. currency would be worth $1,101,670.36. The reward for capturing the FBI’s Most Wanted, Assata Shakur, recently increased from 1,000,000 to 2,000,000 U.S. dollars. Assata Shakur’s net worth probably does not total $2,000,000. She may never earn that amount of money over her lifetime. Again, I am perplexed. What is so threatening about a Black woman bound to her own freedom, one who is also committed to the liberation of others?
A RECKONING: ASSATA IN 1980
Despite the fact that the new world’s
maps are carved out of the ebony
underbellies of Africans, you
grew into a “Moses”
woman, a Harriet Tubman, standing
between the ocean sprays
and morning stars. Thumbtacks crown
your wanted posters. I envision you
a savior born on western soil, a second
coming, another Jonah, the cargo inside,
some bit of contraband, a sharp
gallstone in the bile of Ahab’s whale. - Strange Fruit, Volume I: Uncelebrated Narratives from Black History by Joel Christian Gill (2014)
You, my dear family, are entitled to know my greatest illusion. It is not some sleight of hand or parlor trick. It is not any of the tricks for which I am famous.
The world has known the great illusionist Richard Potter as an Indian from the far-flung exotic orient.
My mother was a black serving woman. She was my father’s slave. My greatest illusion is that I am and have always been a black man. - Pashmina by Nidhi Chanani (2017)
- Speak: The Graphic Novel by Laurie Halse Anderson and Emily Carroll (2018)
Why don’t you ever see a kid dressed up as a groom on Halloween?
The school board banned one of Maya Angelou’s books, so the librarian had to take down her poster.
I fished it out of the trash.
She must be a great writer if the school board is afraid of her.A kid asked him what his painting was.
“It’s Venice at night,
an accountant’s soul,
the blood of imbeciles.
Smoker’s lung.
Tenure.
The inside of a lock,
the taste of iron.
Despair.
A city with streetlights
shot out,
the heart of
a school board director.”
Some teachers whisper he’s having a breakdown.
I think he’s the sanest person I know. - Wires and Nerve, Volume 1: Wires and Nerve by Marissa Meyer and Douglas Holgate (2017)
I don’t think humans realize how fragile their bodies are. So many injuries that are minor annoyances to me would be fatal to my friends.
The people love you, Cinder. It is no small wonder that this announcement will be met with opposition.
It is a beautiful irony that the greatest queen we’ve ever had is the first to take off her crown. - Women Talking by Miriam Toews (2019)
Ona speaks: If it has been decided by the elders and the bishop of Molotschna that we women don’t require counselling following these attacks because we weren’t conscious when they happened, then what are we obliged, or even able, to forgive? Something that didn’t happen? Something that we are unable to understand? And what does that mean more broadly? If we don’t know “the world,” we won’t be corrupted by it? If we don’t know that we are imprisoned then we are free?
We won’t have to leave the people we love? says Neitje. Greta points out that the women could bring loved ones with them. Others question the practicality of this, and Ona mentions, gently, that several of the people we love are people we also fear.
I notice that even Neitje and Autje, who are normally wary of Ona because Ona is thought to have lost her fear— which is akin, for colonists, to having lost one’s moral compass and been transformed into a demon—have turned their attention to her.
Mariche can contain herself no longer. She accuses Ona of being a dreamer. We are women without a voice, Ona states calmly. We are women out of time and place, without even the language of the country we reside in. We are Mennonites without a homeland. We have nothing to return to, and even the animals of Molotschna are safer in their homes than we women are. All we women have are our dreams— so of course we are dreamers.
Greta has raised both arms in the air. She asks: What will happen if the men refuse to meet our demands? Ona responds: We will kill them.
Time will heal our heavy hearts, she states. Our freedom and safety are the ultimate goals, and it is men who prevent us from achieving those goals. But not all men, says Mejal. Ona clarifies: Perhaps not men, per se, but a pernicious ideology that has been allowed to take hold of men’s hearts and minds.
Salome continues to shout: She will destroy any living thing that harms her child, she will tear it from limb to limb, she will desecrate its body and she will bury it alive. She will challenge God on the spot to strike her dead if she has sinned by protecting her child from evil, and furthermore by destroying the evil that it may not harm another. She will lie, she will hunt, she will kill and she will dance on graves and burn forever in hell before she allows another man to satisfy his violent urges with the body of her three-year-old child.
Ona speaks, rescuing me yet again. It has just occurred to her, she says, that the women could consider another option, besides leaving and besides staying and fighting and besides doing nothing.
Mariche reminds her that it’s late in the day to introduce another option. Greta waves this comment away and gestures to Ona to speak.
We could ask the men to leave, says Ona.
Is that a joke? asks Mariche. […]
None of us have ever asked the men for anything, Agata states. Not a single thing, not even for the salt to be passed, not even for a penny or a moment alone or to take the washing in or to open a curtain or to go easy on the small yearlings or to put your hand on the small of my back as I try, again, for the twelfth or thirteenth time, to push a baby out of my body. Isn’t it interesting, she says, that the one and only request the women would make of the men would be to leave? The women break out laughing again.I thought: I have come to Molotschna as a last resort, for peace and to find my purpose, and the women have left Molotschna for the same reasons.
- Wires and Nerve, Volume 2: Gone Rogue by Marissa Meyer, Stephen Gilpin, and Douglas Holgate (2018)
Liam, what’s wrong?
I just don’t understand the way everyone treats her. It’s like they forget they’re talking to a computer.
Maybe the strange thing is that you’re the only one who can’t forget it.I don’t idolize her.
You totally do.
I admire her for what she did for our country. For us. There’s a difference.
Oh, please. You would cut out your own heart if she asked you to.
Perhaps my deference is owed to the fact that she is a queen who would never ask that of me.Is this…Peony’s ID chip?
My military found it on the Benoit farm. It was submitted as evidence to be used against you – if and when you were caught. I’d forgotten all about it until you mentioned you were coming here today. She’s not gone, Cinder. Not as long as you remember her.That’s more like it. Got any weapons?
Yeah. Me.Peony and I used to spend countless hours dreaming of the day we would go to the annual ball. Peony would dress up in Adri’s silk kimonos, and I would drape strands of pearls over my servant-droid body. Then we would sway around her bedroom and pretend we were dancing with the prince. I wish she were here now. I wish she could see me like this – a real person who deserves to go to the ball. But then, maybe she already did see me that way.
As soon as Wolf and Scarlet were back on their farm, they finally got engaged. From what I hear, she proposed to him.
- oh no by Alex Norris (2019)
- Cretaceous by Tadd Galusha (2019)
- Toil & Trouble: 15 Tales of Women & Witchcraft edited by Tess Sharpe and Jessica Spotswood (2018)
When I became Midwife Ley’s apprentice, she explained that in order to practice her craft I must learn to read and to write and that she would teach me. When she asked if I was amenable to that, I began to cry. She did not ask if I cried from fear and frustration or from joy and gratitude. She looked upon my tear-streaked face, and I understood that she already knew my mind, and possibly my heart.
I take the book from the box, holding it carefully, tenderly. I know its worth.
– “Afterbirth” by Andrea Cremer“Why did you do this?” Marimar asked as glass broke and pans clashed in the kitchens. “How did you do this?”
“I didn’t. We become what we need.”
– “Divine Are the Stars” by Zoraida Córdova“Nothing is yours!” The Grand Rosa Divina shouted. “The world wasn’t made for you. The world was made.”
“Divine Are the Stars” by Zoraida CórdovaI wish I could stop smiling at things I hate. Sometimes I wish I never learned.
– “Daughters of Baba Yaga” by Brenna Yovanoff[I] was just mad. Mad at Maya, and mad that the meanest, most hateful thing that someone could say was just another way of pointing out that you were a girl.
– “Daughters of Baba Yaga” by Brenna Yovanoff“You understand the truth, though, don’t you? The most terrifying thing in the world is a girl with power. That’s why they watch us burn.”
– “Why They Watch Us Burn” by Elizabeth MayIf witchcraft is the voice of women rising free and powerful (to change the world, make it ours, on our feet instead of on our knees) then I wish to be a witch more than anything.
– “Why They Watch Us Burn” by Elizabeth May - The Wrong End of the Table: A Mostly Comic Memoir of a Muslim Arab American Woman Just Trying to Fit in by Ayser Salman (2019)
My father walks in and Mom shoves the quarter in his face.
MOM: Talk to your daughter. A boy gave her this!
Dad takes a moment to put on his bifocals and studies the offending item.
DAD: Does he think you’re cheap?
My mother looks at me, satisfied.
DAD: He should have given you a silver dollar!
Now, Mom is disgusted with me, the quarter, and Dad.Shy little Theodore wore glasses and a blue fur coat that made him look like Cookie Monster. He was also the cutest boy I’d ever seen. What girl doesn’t like Cookie Monster?
We put our bags through the x-ray machine, and they were transported to a separate table where airport officials opened and searched them. This was before the age of prohibited liquids, so I couldn’t imagine what they would find that the x-ray hadn’t detected. A man wearing the traditional thawb and an official airport worker jacket eached into my bag, grabbed my Teen Beat magazine, and began combing through. Then, with a flick of his wrist, he tossed it in the trash behind him.
“Wait!” I protested as my mother nudged me to be quiet. The man shook his head and said, “Haram.”
Next, he found the loose magazine photos I had saved of Valerie Bertinelli lounging by a pool—I liked her hair in that picture and wanted to get mine styled in the same way. Nope. “Haram,” he said as he crumpled it up and tossed it aside.
Finally, he got to my prized diary, a small pink book with a lock secured on it to hide all my nine-year-old secrets. On the cover was a picture of a cartoon boy and girl smooching, similar to what you’d find on a Hallmark card. Mr. Haram studied it for a few minutes as if he were debating asking me to unlock it.
In Arabic, my mother said, “For children. She’s just a child.” That seemed to appease him. He put my diary back into my bag, but not before taking a sharpie and scribbling out the image of the boy and girl kissing on the cover.Once, I had a close call when I accidentally dripped spaghetti sauce on a Judy Blume book she’d lent me. I tried to wipe it off with a wet napkin, but that only made the problem worse, spreading the stain and blurring the words on the page. I panicked and spent two hours debating what was better, telling her the truth or saying that the book was stolen by a Mutawwi’ when my family was out on a Friday morning. While I was agonizing over this, my doorbell rang and Amirah entered, bringing some dolmah her mom had made. I awkwardly blurted out my confession and told her I would pay to have the book replaced. She laughed at me until she realized I was serious, then waved it off with a flick of her hand. “I get chocolate milk on my books all the time. Spaghetti sauce will be a nice change.” That’s when I realized I might have found my soul sister.
During college, I was still dipping my toe into the dating waters, having recently been broken up with by Charlie. He’d done it with a note—and not one written by him, mind you. After ghosting me for a month, we finally met up to talk. When I asked how he was, he said, “Maybe this will explain how things are going,” and handed me a note from his new girlfriend.
It said: “Hey cutie, I can’t wait to see you tonight. Hope you’re having a good trig class.”I told no one about my emotional state, especially not Mom. Back then, it wasn’t commonplace to talk openly about suffering from depression, especially not in Arab culture. Even my Western friends didn’t quite understand why I was sad. Out-of-town friends lamented that they wished they could live a glamorous Los Angeles life, and one male friend even told me I was “too cute to be so upset.” I wanted to punch him in the throat.
If anything was going to take the focus away from a discussion about terrorism, it would have been Charlize Theron’s badass black side-buckle boots.
Similarly, my friends also become more vocal and active. Karen was outraged about reproductive rights and got out and marched. Mike marched for reproductive rights as well as LGBTQ rights. Karen insisted that Lena march for women’s rights, which Lena was planning on doing anyway, but then she got pissed about Karen’s sudden civic interest because, “I didn’t see her at any of our Black Lives Matter protests last year when our men were being shot by police!” And Naz was pissed at Stacy for being self-congratulatory about her participation in the Women’s March—not because she bought the pussy hat, made the signs, and documented her experience on Instagram, but because a year ago she’d called Naz “a drama queen” when she tried to explain how dangerous a Trump presidency would be. And that’s how I learned about intersectionality.
[A]fter you’ve decided to force yourself to get back out there, you tend to take more chances and select people who don’t normally fit your type. The reasoning? You’ve already selected your type once, and that didn’t work. Or, in my case, you’ve already selected your best friend whom you shouldn’t have married in the first place, and so now you’re going to choose that guy with the full-sleeve tattoo commemorating his defection from the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
- The Outsider by Stephen King / narrated by Will Patton (2018)
‘I would like to believe in God,’ she said, ‘because I don’t want to believe we just end, even though it balances the equation – since we came from blackness, it seems logical to assume that it’s to blackness we return. But I believe in the stars, and the infinity of the universe. That’s the great Out There. Down here, I believe there are more universes in every fistful of sand, because infinity is a two-way street. I believe there’s another dozen thoughts in my head lined up behind each one I’m aware of. I believe in my consciousness and my unconscious, even though I don’t know what those things are. And I believe in A. Conan Doyle, who had Sherlock Holmes say, “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”’
‘Wasn’t he the guy who believed in fairies?’ Ralph asked.Money was no cure for sorrow, Alec reflected, but it did allow one to grieve in relative comfort.
‘You asked me if I’d seen one of your kind before,’ Holly interrupted. ‘I haven’t – well, not exactly – but I’m sure Ralph has. Strip away the shape-changing, the memory-sucking, and the glowing eyes, and you’re just a sexual sadist and common pedophile.’
The outsider recoiled as if she had struck him. For a moment he seemed to forget all about the burning SUV sending up smoke signals from the abandoned parking lot. ‘That’s offensive, ridiculous, and untrue. I eat to live, that’s all. Your kind does the same thing when you slaughter pigs and cows. That’s all you are to me – cattle.’
‘You’re lying.’ Holly took a step forward, and when Ralph tried to take her by the arm, she shook him off. Red roses had begun to bloom in her pale cheeks. ‘Your ability to look like someone you’re not – something you’re not – guarantees trust. You could have taken any of Mr Maitland’s friends. You could have taken his wife. But instead of that, you took a child. You always take children.’
‘They’re the strongest, sweetest food! Have you never eaten veal? Or calves’ liver?’ - Window Horses by Ann Marie Fleming (2017)
- The Underfoot, Volume 1: The Mighty Deep by Ben Fisher, Emily S. Whitten, and Michelle Nguyen (2019)
- The Mermaid’s Voice Returns in This One (Women Are Some Kind of Magic #3) by Amanda Lovelace (2019)
swan song II
i have a
terrible habit
of writing
myself
braver than
i’ll ever be,
& i’m not sure
which of us
i’m trying
to convince—
you, or
me.in one of our many worlds existed a girl who couldn’t handle how very sad & confusing life could be, so she approached one of her many overstuffed bookshelves, got up on her tippy-toes, & pleaded to the dozens of warped & well-loved spines, “i want nothing more in this world than to be one of you.” miraculously, the books listened. they more than listened. from that day on, they took her in & raised her as one of their own. each night while she was supposed to be sleeping, the girl’s new family scribbled her into fairy tales about princesses & witches & even her favorite fantastical creature: mermaids.
star light,
star bright,
first star
i see tonight;
i wish i may,
i wish i might
flee my skin
for but a night.
– bibliophile.when i tell you i’m still waiting for my hogwarts letter, what i mean to say is i never meant to be here for so long.
– forever wandering lost & wandless.she didn’t kiss frogs.
she kissed great white sharks.at
this point,
staying
with you
is nothing
more
than
muscle
memory.this is me
pressing
my finger
to the sand,
delicately
drawing
your name
there,
& then
stepping back
so i can
watch
you
as you’re
finally
carried away.
– goodbye.you are sad now.
you are not sad forever. - This Land Is My Land: A Graphic History of Big Dreams, Micronations, and Other Self-Made States by Andy Warner and Sofie Louise Dam (2019)
A community founded in upstate New York in 1848 and based on a radical reimagining of society, marriage and child rearing…
…ended up being one of the world’s largest purveyors of cutlery and tableware. - Love Beyond Body, Space, and Time: An Indigenous LGBT Sci-Fi Anthology edited by Hope Nicholson (2016)
I knew the apocalypse had started before he said her name.
(“Legends Are Made, Not Born” by Cherie Dimaline)I walked into the clearing with a weight much different than the one left by my mother’s death; a weight that balanced out the ache and made the ordinary extraordinary.
(“Legends Are Made, Not Born” by Cherie Dimaline)Strange Boy and Shadow Boy realized at last that they had never been alone. They were just the first to free their hearts and fly in their own beauty.
(“The Boys Who Became the Hummingbirds” by Daniel Heath Justice)Could I manage the first animal clinic on Mars? Support a burgeoning pet population? First dogs and then cats and then potbellied pigs! Goats, bison, passenger pigeons: dense flocks migrating through engineered skies. I’d build a paradise, one better than the home I lost as a child.
(“NÉ ŁE!” by Darcie Little Badger)As for Aanji Iron Woman, as she danced in the night, carefully following the steps of her aunties, nothing else but this moment mattered. She might never pass as human the way she wanted to, but to the Star River tribe, she was family.
(“Imposter Syndrome” by Mari Kurisato) - Fish Girl by David Wiesner and Donna Jo Napoli (2017)
- Tomboy: A Graphic Memoir by Liz Prince (2014)
That ended my 2nd grade kissing spree.
In the library we were joined by all the other 6th grade girls in our school.
I have a bad feeling about this. - Rayne & Delilah’s Midnite Matinee by Jeff Zentner (2019)
People have a lot of free time, apparently. Especially the kind who pay for postage to “well, actually” a public access show.
I don’t know who watches Midnite Matinee or why. I mean, I have some idea from letters we get. Here’s my guess: it’s lonely people. People who don’t have a lot going on in their lives, because they have time to sit at home on a Saturday night (that’s when we air in most markets, including our home market) and flip through channels. People who aren’t rich, because if they were, they’d have more entertainment options. People who aren’t hip, because if they were, they’d seek out higher quality entertainment options. People who don’t truly love to be frightened, because if they did, they’d find actual scary movies. People who prefer their awful movies straight, with no commentary, because otherwise they’d watch old episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000. People who still write letters. It’s a very niche crowd. Most of all, I think it’s people who love to be reminded that sometimes you do your best and you come up short, but there’s still a place in the world for people like that. People like them.
Buford whines at the suit he’s wearing and tries to get at the chicken livers. His normally sad eyes always convey utter despair at these times. Kill me, they plead. Even if it’s painful.
“The leather cuff is the fedora of the wrist.”
Someday I’d love to know why the people with the least to lose are always losing the little they have.
And while we’re kissing, sweet melancholy wells inside me. The kind you get when you’re already reaching the end of a beginning. I don’t want to grow up. I want to keep living in this moment forever. With Lawson. With Delia. Take the hourglass and lay it on its side.
You don’t always know at the time when you’re experiencing one of those random memories you’ll carry all your life. When nothing momentous happened other than driving a little too fast in the direction of Florida, at dusk, with your best friend by your side and, at your back, a guy who’s really good at kissing you. Still, you remember it until the day you die. But this time I know.
We may not have forever together, but we have right now.
I guess everything dies eventually, even the sun someday. My life feels like a star collapsing into itself. And it was never that bright to begin with.
Sometimes small and unspectacular things can be a universe.
Childhood feels like it takes forever when you’re in the midst of it, but one day you wake up and you’re eighteen and going to college. That basset hound puppy with the bow around his neck? You’re going to see his whole life pass. You may find someone you love and get married. And it might last a long time, but it ends one way or another. Maybe you’ll be together for fifty or sixty years, but one of you is going to get left behind. I’m glad things end, though. It forces you to love them ferociously while you have them.
- Flying Couch: A Graphic Memoir by Amy Kurzweil (2016)
Sometimes a whole world is one person. My worlds were disappearing, one by one.
I met other survivors but we didn’t really talk about it either. Sometimes little things would come out. They say, How did you survive? I say, I was a shiksa, and they know. But lately now we talk more. Since people began to say never again. Never again. Now we want to talk because we don’t want for it to happen again, not to anyone.
- On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden (2018)
Why are adults so stupid?
Hmn?
It’s like the older you get the more you forget that you can change things.We were pissed off when you showed up. Char was gone and we were broken. And we could’ve taken that out on you. But we didn’t. You showed up and Alma made you dinner. We made you a bed, even played cards together. And we TOLD you, we told you that Ell didn’t talk, we told you their pronouns. And you IGNORED US.
I don’t need to know what stuff! This is a job, none of that is important!
No. NO way. You don’t get to decide that. You don’t get to decide what’s important for US. You can choose for yourself, but no one else.
Fuck yeah, Jules.
When you chose not to respect us, we chose not to respect you. The fact that you expect people you shit on to treat you nicely shows just how delusional you are.
I can’t believe this. So I screwed up some words. You act like I’m a monster!
Wow…you really don’t get it, do you? Have you ever even considered that something that’s trivial to you could mean…SO much more to someone else? You don’t get to take the easy road out and just respect the parts of people that you recognize. And, pro tip: If you find yourself in a similar situation in the future where you’re surrounded by people you don’t understand – Try listening. It’ll work a lot better for you than talking. - FTL, Y’all!: Tales From the Age of the $200 Warp Drive edited by C. Spike Trotman (2018)
Android bodies can withstand radiation, temperature, and pressure outside of normal limits.
Even see ultraviolet.
Transmissions take years to reach home.
How long transmissions last depends where the launch lands.
Sometimes nothing comes back.
But sometimes you see a double sunrise on a comet.
Or feel the last breaths of a star.
(“Lia” by Alexxander Dovelin)they fed me a star
(“Ignition” by Iris Jay and Skolli Rubedo)
(“Finders Keepers” by Ahueonao)
(“Story of a Rescue” by Nathaniel Wilson) - The Girl Who Married a Skull and Other African Stories, Volume 1 (Cautionary Fables & Fairytales) by Cameron Morris, et al. (2018)
No, that’s it! No more playing with snakes! I’m not fattening you up to be dinner for somebody else!
Look, guys! I caught a hunter for us to eat!
- Anarcha Speaks: A History in Poems by Dominique Christina (2018)
when he left
seem like he stayed
like i kept
some of it
like i ain’t
have no other way.
and now Betsey say
i expecting…
how you translate
a bludgeonin to
a birth?
you tell me how
i’m suposed to
do that –
a baby
from the mud pile…
a baby…
one more
thing i don’t know
how to carry.i say:
what you make a dem stars?
he say:
they just like us. sizzlin dead.fine. new hell, whatever.
That morning he woke up and coupled
With his wife unceremoniously threw a leg
Over the bed after, sat up and told her
What they needed was more negroes
Like sayin you need to pick up milk from the store
Like sayin you outta eggs and corn mealthis bruise ain’t no girl
she gone
she never gon be again
she too much a ghost even
for burial - The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks by Max Brooks and Ibraim Roberson (2008)
Father Mendoza informs me that this brotherhood’s temple contains a chamber of severed demon heads, still alive, and still wailing.
- The Cassandra: A Novel by Sharma Shields (2019)
“Mrs. Brown just phoned. She said you bought a whore’s lipstick. She said I ought to know. The whole town heard about it on the party line.”
Just daydreaming of rebelling was an exhausting rebellion of its own.
Tom Cat, it became clear, had feelings for me, and I imagined that maybe I had feelings for him, too. How would I know? What did having feelings even mean? I tried to think of myself as falling in love. I knew Tom Cat would be a hard worker and a kind man to live with for the rest of my days, but the bloodied meadowlark returned to me, flashing its panicked yellow breast, beating its good wing against the glass bars of Tom Cat’s rib cage. Maybe that, in itself, was what love felt like.
- The Silence of Our Friends by Mark Long, Jim Demonakos, and Nate Powell (2012)
- Womanthology: Heroic edited by Bonnie Burton, et al. (2012)
“Come on kiddo. It’s bedtime. Did you like the comics?”
“Sorta.”
“Well, maybe we’ll go buy you some comics a girl might like.”
“It’s okay, momma…
“I made my own.”
– “In Every Heart a Masterwork” by Gail Simone and Jean KangFor fun, I write TV spec scripts that are too weird to ever air, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Count Chocula, or an episode of CSI where the serial killer murders his victims using craft glitter and googly eyes. In college, I wrote a TV script that was a crossover between The X-Files and Murder, She Wrote called Mulder, She Wrote. I really should be running a TV network.
– Editor – Bonnie Burton - Trish Trash #1: Rollergirl of Mars by Jessica Abel (2016)
- The End of Summer by Tillie Walden (2017)
- Shattered Warrior by Sharon Shinn and Molly Ostertag (2017)
“Can you see it? The Shattered Warrior constellation. It’s only visible for one month a year.”
“No. I can never see anything in the stars. Why do they call it that?”
“Old folk tale. My father hated it, but it was my mother’s favorite story.
“It’s about a princess who was in love with a common soldier. The king had promised his daughter’s hand in marriage to any man who could win a duel against his mortal enemy.
“The warrior won the fight, but the evil lord’s soldiers murdered him and hacked his body into pieces.
“The princess grieved and grieved, refusing all other suitors, and the king feared she would die. Then one day, a handsome young man came to the palace.
“It was the brave warrior come back to request her hand in marriage.”
“How could he still be alive?”
“That’s what the princess asked him on their wedding night. And he said, ‘Your love was so great that it mended my body and restored my broken heart.’
“Every year, as the world revolves, the constellation dissolves. And every year, when the stars realign, you can see that Shattered Warrior again. Brought back to life by love.” - Be Prepared by Vera Brosgol (2018)
I wondered what rabies felt like.
I wondered how many people I’d bite before they subdued me. - Spinning by Tillie Walden (2017)
[But knowing for so long still didn’t make it easy.]
“Congrats on passing.”
[I knew it wasn’t right and I didn’t tell anyone how I felt.]
“Eh.”
[So I quietly fell in love, over and over again. never once thinking it could ever be real.]
“I always pass.”I had to believe that if I kept going things would get better.
They had to.
Didn’t they?I was scared to be gay. I was scared to be in Texas. I was scared of all the hate I saw in YouTube videos and that I knew existed.
But I had to force those feelings down, leaving my stomach feeling cold and stiff, because I didn’t want it to matter.
I just wanted to be here with her. - The Stillwater Girls by Minka Kent (2019)
Exhaling, I wish to myself that I could stop looking for invisible cracks and pin-size holes in everything he tells me, in everything he does, but until I have answers, I imagine this will be my new normal.
He’s an island, though he’s more like that island of trash that floats around the Atlantic Ocean. No one wants him. No one knows what to do with him.
Brant always said everything has to die to be reborn again, but I beg to differ. There are plenty of places on this earth with lush green everything always, places where nothing dies because the sun refuses not to shine.
I’m going to read them all.
- The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas (2019)
“The funny thing is, the other time travelers—I’m thinking of Teddy Avedon in particular, he’s been showing me the ropes—they keep telling me that it’s green to be so excited. They mean I’m being gauche. Teddy says I’ll get used to seeing dead people. But I think he’s wrong. Whenever I visit my father, the trees in his garden are young again, and so is he. I will never take that for granted.”
To live an incident you’ve already read about is called completion. Returning to an incident you’ve already experienced is called echoing. Feeling angry with someone for things they won’t do wrong for years is called zeitigzorn.
For instance—intercourse with one’s future self was called forecasting. Intercourse with one’s past self was a legacy fuck.
Ruby knew something was wrong as soon as she opened her eyes the next morning. Not because of a sixth sense, or anything as silly as that. She knew because Bee was usually an early riser. While she’d stayed in the flat, her chatter with Breno and quiet singing and clinking of breakfast cutlery and pots were the soundtrack that roused Ruby. So when Ruby’s eyes focused on her bedside clock, which clearly read ten twenty, and the flat was silent, she knew Bee was gone. She pretended, for the last few minutes, that her grandmother had overslept.
Two women, who’d already witnessed each other’s deaths, married on the first day of spring. […]
Entertainments followed: fifty-five Angharads danced a ballet. - Vagrant Queen Volume 1 (Vagrant Queen #1-6) by Magdalene Visaggio, Jason Smith, Harry Saxon, and Zakk Saam (2019)
- Safely Endangered Comics by Chris McCoy (2019)
- Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe (2019)
- Smut Peddler Presents: Sex Machine (Smut Peddler #4) edited by C. Spike Trotman (2019)
- Soppy by Philippa Rice (2014)
- How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don’t by Lane Moore (2018)
The Friend Zone, while not always ideal, is still a goddamn gift, and really, the definition of true love. If you love someone, or even just care about them, as you claim to, you don’t mind the Friend Zone at all, because sure, fine, you don’t get to French them and stuff, but you get to know them and be close to them and hear all the dumb things that run through their minds and all the brilliant things that they don’t even know are brilliant. You get to know them and share the same air, and you’re alive at the same time, which is a gift in and of itself. If you don’t want the Friend Zone, you don’t want the girl. Simple as that.
When we see teenage girls in movies who “seduce” older men, we paint them as bad girls in crop tops, bad seeds in purple lipstick, troublemakers with lip rings, jailbait—sexy, sexy little teens with crazy horny brains. What we don’t ever talk about is what they’re looking for, what they’re running from, and why they’re running toward any kind of love or attention at a terrifying speed.
I started losing a lot of weight and was eating only one salad a day, with sundried tomatoes, olives, red peppers, salt and pepper, and avocado. That’s all. This was the only salad I ate for months, maybe even the whole year. It took a while for me to realize it, but the last night we’d had together, truly had together before the stupid drinks/hang with his friends, we’d watched movies and made a salad together with sundried tomatoes, olives, red peppers, salt and pepper, and avocado. And my brain so desperately wanted to get back to the last night I’d ever have with him that it tried to pause time by wanting nothing but that salad for a year.
And yes, I do watch these shows over and over again, often curating specific episodes like “Okay, so we should start here because this is when Ben and Leslie first meet,” like I’m creating a super-cut version of the show that plays out like a twenty-hour rom-com. And even though that’s a fucking long rom-com, I am always so gutted when TV shows end, when a TV rewatch is done. Often I’ll go back and start the whole thing over again because I don’t want to leave that world. I want to stay safely wrapped inside it, so immersed I feel like I can move within that world, that I live inside it, that I’m a part of it. […]
Nik once very accurately observed about my obsessive relationship with television: “Oh my god, Lane. I just realized something. You rewatch your favorite shows because they’re like your family. The characters are people who are there for you when you need them, you’ve grown to love them, you know them well, you’ve spent so much time with them. In some cases, the shows were with you when you were growing up, they raised you, they’re your family. And when they’re done, you don’t want them to leave because then you’re alone again and your family is gone.” And he was very, very correct.
But back to Jim Halpert.I seriously can’t watch seasons one through three of The Office without just crying nonstop at how beautiful the world would be if more dudes were Jim Halpert in pretty much all of the ways. It’s physically painful to behold his existence, and I don’t feel like that’s an exaggeration. His relationship with Pam is basically a fairy tale that seems like it could actually happen, so once you get out into the world of online dating apps and guys you meet at bars who think negging is cute, it’s reasonable to find you’re very, very angry because you were told there would be Jims. (Or at the very least, one Jim.)
Anyway, my point is I have lots of friends and leave my h
