Home > Author > Emily X.R. Pan
1 " We're not lost. We're just headed somewhere different. "
― Emily X.R. Pan , The Astonishing Color of After
2 " Funny how when you can't sleep the brain turns itself inside out, becomes a desperate and hungering thing. All I want right now is to fall headfirst into the blackest black. "
3 " There's no point in wishing. We can't change anything about the past. We can only remember. We can only move forward. "
4 " Once you figure out what matters, you'll figure out how to be brave. "
5 " Once upon a time we were the standard colors of a rainbow, cheery and certain of ourselves. At some point, we all began to stumble into the in-betweens, the murky colors made dark and complicated by resentment and quiet anger. At some point, my mother slid so off track she sank into hues of gray, a world drawn only in shadows. "
6 " Memory is a mean thing, slicing at you from the harshest angles, dipping your consciousness into the wrong colors again and again. A moment of humiliation, or devastation, or absolute rage, to be rewound and replayed, spinning a thread that wraps around the brain, knotting itself into something of a noose. It won't exactly kill you, but it makes you feel the squeeze of every horrible moment. How do you stop it? How do you work the mind free? "
7 " The purpose of memory is to remind us how to live. "
8 " Believing is a type of magic. It can make something true. "
9 " Hold your finger to the sky with so much force it lengthens like a spine. Look up to the point of it and beyond. There. That tiny patch of the world, no bigger than the tip of your finger. At first glance, it might look like one flat color. Blue, or gray, or maybe even orange.But it's much more complex than that. Squint. See the daubs of lilac. The streak of sage no wider than a hyphen. That butterscotch smear and the faint wash of carnelian. All of them coming together to swirl at the point just above your finger.Breathe them in. Let them settle in your lungs. Those are the colors of right now. "
10 " It’s okay to be afraid. But not okay if be afraid means you do nothing. You must not do nothing. That’s not life worth living. "
11 " Here is my mother, with wings instead of hands, and feathers instead of hair. Here is my mother, the reddest of brilliant reds, the color of my love and my fear, all of my fiercest feelings trailing after her in the sky like the tail of a comet. "
12 " Did my mother ever get to see a cicada molting? Did she wish that she could do exact that? Shed her skin and be someone new? There were days when she seemed to transform into something quieter, darker. Her colors deeper but also muted. Both her truer self, and not. Or maybe it wasn't a transformation. Maybe it was a momentary reveal. A peeling back of the protective layers. A sharpening of a pencil, bringing the tip to its most focused point. "
13 " Everything fades. Everything in the physical world, like paper and furniture, but also things in the mind. Memories, emotions. Life. Friendships. Those fade, too. It’s just a matter of time. "
14 " Children know the truth," says Feng, her voice going very quiet.I turn to look at her. "What? What do you mean?""They haven't learned to walk around with a veil over their eyes. That's a habit that come with adulthood. Kids always know what they see. That's why ghosts can't hide from them. "
15 " We kissed, and I was every color in the world, alight. "
16 " My mother's dying soaked down through the carpet, through the wood. When it was done with the bedroom, it took over our house, and then it moved on to me. It soaked through my hair and skin and bone, through my skull and deep into my brain. Now it's staining everything, leaking the blackest black into the rest of the world. "
17 " 最難風雨故人來 [...] it’s an incredible blessing to be able to see your loved ones during the most difficult times. "
18 " You love who you love. There's no changing that. "
19 " Colors flash like promises and black flickers like static, like memories, and everything is falling, falling, remembering, falling, remembering, the two words synonymous. "
20 " What is memory? It's not something you can physically hold, or see, or smell, or taste. It's just nerve impulses jumping between neurons. Sometimes it's a matter of choice. Other times it's self-preservation, or protection" -Leight "
