Home > Author > Aminah Mae Safi
21 " There were so few times in Lulu's life, so few moments, that the scared reached out and touched her. Sitting here, she felt it in her bones. It didn't matter that this was two old customs married together in a strange, new thing that only belonged to her family. That was what made it so special to her in the first place. "
― Aminah Mae Safi , Not the Girls You're Looking For
22 " Of strangers asking her over and over again what she was. Like a piece of flora or fauna. Like she was missing her proper taxonomy. "
23 " No, I'm not angry. I'm furious. Livid. I'm beyond. If anger were the circles of hell, I'd be sitting there in the ninth one with fucking Lucifer himself. No. I'd kick Lucifer out. I'd be too angry for Lucifer. For fucking Satan. Do you get me? "
24 " I can't go around proving I'm American to everyone I meet. That's too exhausting. And, I'm Arab too. It's in-between. I'm in between. It doesn't come with a neat package or a support group. It just is. I can't change it. And even If I could, I wouldn't.I don't fit. And sometimes that's the worst-knowing I'll never fit; nowhere will ever feel comfortable and nowhere will ever accept me all the way. "
25 " Numbers were honest. Numbers, theoretically, didn’t lie. "
― Aminah Mae Safi , This Is All Your Fault
26 " She was a hot mess that had cooled off, leaving behind ashes and sludge. "
27 " You don’t know what to do, but you did know how to steal nine thousand dollars of the bookstore’s money? "
28 " you to have a much better attitude here, prince of accidental larceny. "
29 " Her book account had transformed so long ago from something she did for herself to a business that she ought to have found it easy not to take it personally. "
30 " Is it weird, turning something you love into a business? "
31 " It feels kind of poetic that my love of books gets to pay for so many educations. But it definitely adds pressure. To perform. To do well. To look a certain way on camera. To have a certain rate of engagement for every post. "
32 " She didn’t know how to talk about the fact that she often wondered if the reason she succeeded as a Latinx girl with a book account on the internet was because she was half-white and because she was ethnically ambiguous-looking. That she must have benefited from some strange proximity to whiteness and that she was benefiting still by the way her account had grown. That she didn’t know if she deserved all the followers that she had amassed. "
33 " What’s right and what is expedient are two different things. "
34 " Told her that they were two girls who were never going to get along and were made to fight with each other, almost on a visceral, cellular level. As though the smallest pieces that made up Imogen were diametrically opposed to the tiniest pieces that made up Cool Girl. "
35 " And we belong together. "
― Aminah Mae Safi , Travelers Along the Way: A Robin Hood Remix
36 " After all, what was a lie to a girl who pretended to be a poet on one corner of the internet all while she took videos of herself vaping on the other end just to be cool enough not to shake up the social hierarchy? "
37 " And Daniella—with her lies and her moral gymnastics—she had the heart of steel necessary to protect her and her "
38 " The bookstore is closing. Count your blessings in the gratitude journal you clearly keep. "
39 " And he could profit so much more easily off the land than doing the work to run an independent bookstore. "
40 " Are you really so out of touch that you disdain every feeling on planet Earth? Do you really not love anything at all? "