em

“You can't erase your past. And as long as you have a past, you're just like everyone else. You have to learn to live with that. It matters...eventually the choices you make today will be part of that past. So think about it, and decide how you want to live.”
― Kentaro Yabuki, Black Cat, Volume 20

“We were nostalgic for a time that wasn't yet over.”
― Nina LaCour, We Are Okay

“My memories don’t feel as though they’ve been pulled up by the root. Even if they fade, something remains. Like tiny seeds that might germinate again if the rain falls. And even if a memory disappears completely, the heart retains something. A slight tremor or pain, some bit of joy, a tear.”
― Yōko Ogawa, The Memory Police

“I'm not what anyone thinks I am. I never was. I didn't have the mouth to put it into words, to say what was wrong, to change the things I felt I needed to change. And every day it was difficult, walking around and knowing that people saw me one way, knowing that they were wrong, so completely wrong, that the real me was invisible to them. It didn't even exist to them. So: If nobody sees you, are you still there?”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji