Oct 29, 2020
My Father, Montaigne, and the Art of Living
When my father died in 2012, I inherited his well-read copy of Montaigne’s ‘Essais.’
When my father died in 2012, I inherited his well-read copy of Montaigne’s ‘Essais.’
Where I lived and grew up, the novella was never endangered.
“I needed preparation, not protection. I needed to see myself as a part of history.”
For generations, Indians had to learn a poem about a flower most would rarely see.
The cruel logic of cancer therapy is that what kills the malignant could also kill the benign.
There is an equivalence between fanfiction writers and readers: we’re in this together, united by our mutual passion for media.
“What do we want? Livable lives. Thriving communities. The right to our bodies and our desires. Love. Resilience. Possibility. Queer genius.”
I go to Japan, pulled like a magnet, to see what is mine, undiscovered or forgotten; to see what will never be mine; and to find some way to reconcile the two.
Tango is not a thing that can be done halfway. Neither, I learned, is memoir. You’re either all in, or you’re dishonest.
When Etty wrote to herself, I heard her speaking to me, and I took her words to heart.
“I think of McCarthy and ‘The Group,’ giving me language to understand myself before I even knew that’s what I needed.”
“There is a saying in book collecting: You only regret the books you don’t buy.”
Fitzgerald was ground down, I imagine, consumed by how to take care of her family. This didn’t make her any less the thinker, writer, reader, that she was.
I told Kingston how much her book meant to me as a half-Chinese woman, as a writer. It showed me my own life was worthy of examination, even exaltation.
“The best books show us who we were when we first read them, who we are now, and who we may yet become.”
“By reading the debut texts of the writers whose books I’ve at one point set down, I tried to find my way further into the work.”
“There are those who fail to realize how deeply Thompson cared about his country. He was a product of it.”
“I am three days aged in Lagos and cry as my fingers turn the first page.”
“Unlike most popular orphan characters, I wasn’t too young to remember my parents.”
Briggs didn’t create the monster lurking under the bed, he just told us it was there.
