Emily X.R. Pan Quotes

But things are good," Caro went on. "It's kind of scary how good."

"What do you mean, scary?"

Caro shrugged. "I mean, our whole relationship is the payoff of being brave enough to go for something we both wanted. But we have to stay brave.

Memories tell a story, if you look hard enough. Because the purpose of memory, I would argue, it to remind us how to live" -Leigh

The more I think about it, the more that believing seems like the ultimate definition of family.

I tried to swallow again, but my throat was dry enough to be splintered apart and used for kindling

There's no point in wishing. We can't change anything about the past. We can only remember. We can only move forward.

If he looked in my eyes straight on, he would know how he'd pierced me with an arrow, how its shaft was still sticking out of my chest, twitching each time my heart contracted. And maybe he'd see how my mother had sliced up everything else.

We're not lost. We're just headed somewhere different.

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.

I'll do all the things I constantly forgot to, all the things I wish I could go back and add in like another layer on a watercolour painting.

Believing is a type of magic. It can make something true.

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

I listen to the clock striking out each determined tick. 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, gathering them like drops of water in a desert. I'd always counted on having an oasis.

The purpose of memory is to remind us how to live.

Pretend you're a kid again and you don't even know what's good. Just try for the sake of trying. For the sake of having fun.

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.

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.

Each piece was a snow globe of emotion and instinct. And the music-- that was another language entirely.

Maybe that's where all the other colours are hiding - in a dimenson of the world we just can't see, between our sky and the rest of the universe.

I guess the universe has a way of knocking supposed-tos right on their asses.

Once you figure out what matters, you'll figure out how to be brave.

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.

Once upon a time we'd been an almost perfect family. I wish we could rewind, go back to live in those years forever.

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.

Colors flash like promises and black flickers like static, like memories, and everything is falling, falling, remembering, falling, remembering, the two words synonymous.

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.