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41 " Some terrible requirement of being a teenager is being absolutely awful when your parents are being lovely. "
― Emily X.R. Pan , The Astonishing Color of After
42 " Before me lay a body grayer than a sketch. Someone had applied makeup and colors to try to make it look alive. I didn’t cry. That was not my mother. My mother is free in the sky. She doesn’t have the burden of a human body, is not made up of a single dot of gray. My mother is a bird. "
43 " I think people see ghosts all the time, " says Feng. "And I think ghosts want to be seen. They want to be reassured that they truly exist. They back into this world after passing through the gates of death into another dimension, and suddenly they hear every thought, speak every language, understand things they didn't get when they were alive. "
44 " 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. "
45 " Once you figure out what matters, you’ll figure out how to be brave. "
46 " Sisters are very lucky... They get to be best friends. Even in the afterlife, I think they recognize the presence of the other better than anyone else. "
47 " I wish I could command my brain, say to it: Here. Go ahead. Unspool, and let the memories go. Let them be gone. "
48 " I tried to swallow again, but my throat was dry enough to be splintered apart and used for kindling "
49 " If only I could rewind, go back in time and ask my mother every question about every tiny thing. How crucial those little fragments are now; how great their absence. I should have saved them up, gathered them like drops of water in a desert. I’d always counted on having an oasis. "
50 " The mother-shaped hole became a cutout of the blackest black. Something I could only see around. If I tried to look directly at it, I saw emptiness. "
51 " Back at home, sometimes people say I look exotic or foreign. Sometimes they even mean it as a compliment. I guess they don't hear how that makes it sound like I'm some animal on display at the zoo. "
52 " The clung to me as I dug through my bag of the keys to the house, it was a warm rain, and it looked gray as it came down from the sky. I imagined it to be liquid armor, shaping itself to my body where it made contact. Shielding me from everything "
53 " The rain clung to me as I dug through my bag of the keys to the house, it was a warm rain, and it looked gray as it came down from the sky. I imagined it to be liquid armor, shaping itself to my body where it made contact. Shielding me from everything "
54 " It's nobody's fault. But is that even true? It's only human nature to look for a place to lay the blame. Our fingers are more than ready to do the pointing it's like we're all blindfolded and spinning "
55 " She was a sea creature and the music was her ocean. It had always belonged to her. It was in her every breath, her every movement. She was the color of home. "
56 " If Axel were there with me, he probably would’ve squeezed my shoulder and asked, What color? And I would’ve had to explain that I was colorless, translucent. I was a jellyfish caught up in a tide, forced to go wherever the ocean willed. I was as unreal as my mother’s nonexistent note. "
57 " Tiene gracia que, cuando no puedes dormir, el cerebro se ponga patas arriba, se convierta en algo desesperado y hambriento. Lo único que quiero ahora mismo es caer de cabeza en la más negra de las negruras. Lo único que quiero es que todo se apague para poder descansar al fin. Que los colores se detengan. Mandar lejos los pensamientos. "
58 " En mi interior aún hay un agujero con forma de madre. Siempre lo habrá. Pero tal vez no tenga por qué ser un hoyo profundo y oscuro donde tropezar y caerme.Tal vez pueda ser una vasija. Algo que albergue recuerdos y colores (…) "
59 " There was something disturbing about seeing her in that loneliness-induced sleep. "
60 " Once you figure out what matters, you'll out how to be brave. "