my only job now, in all the world, is to not destroy my kids, and in turn, teach them not to destroy others

I wish I had spoken when it mattered

Three years ago Daria described the fall of the Soviet Union to me. She said, Nastya, one day the light went out and the spirits came back. And we returned to the forest.

She had the terrible sinking feeling that whatever was going wrong right now, it was her fault somehow: that she hadn’t been smart enough or good enough.

Baggage means no matter how far you go, no matter how many times you immigrate, there are countries in you you’ll never leave.

Repeating patterns, the mistakes of yr parents, running but not getting very far. Not as far as you wanted but maybe farther than you think.

treaties are for settlers, too.

The nuclear family is a construct that both renders affairs of the family unit private and makes labor forces more “flexible.” Economists say frictionless.

I didn’t know how a child was supposed to grieve, and no one told me.

I’m more interested in solidarity, even if I don’t quite yet know myself what I mean by it, just the feeling I get from it—the startling, quenching relief of it; the force of its surprise, like being loved.

who’d have thought that explosion of joy would end five years later in the most absurd butchery . . .

At my high school there was a sign that said: “The world belongs to those who read.” That’s a lie, I thought, a lie, a lie, a lie.

she copies down sentences that tell one how to live, which have the undeniable weight of truth because they come from books

They say willingness is what one needs to succeed. They say one needs to succeed.

Human beings were trying to behave as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine.

The poem can start with him walking backwards into a room. He takes off his jacket and sits down for the rest of his life, that’s how we bring Dad back.

I care for Henrietta Lacks and all the names whispered in my ear by the live oak trees. I don’t care about the father of modern gynecology, honored on South Carolina’s golf course capitol.

Because this mess I made I made with love. Because they came into my life, these ghosts, like something poured. Because crying, believe it or not, did wonders.

I wished to trust, and so I trusted. When events did not please me, my dreams reworked them.

I wanted to know how to inhabit time in a way that wasn’t a character flaw.