46 Quotes by Emily X.R. Pan

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.

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

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.

Some terrible requirement of being a teenager is being absolutely awful when your parents are being lovely.

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.

A baby bouncing over a knee above a familiar leather sofa. Across the room, deft hands mapping out black and white keys. A living room bursting with magenta warmth and dandelion cheer and all the hues of love, invisible but undeniably there.

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.

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.

What makes a person – one who is so deeply loved – decide to do such a thing?