Ella Fogarty

“We try to preserve life, even when we know it has no chance of enduring its body. We feed it, keep it comfortable, bathe it, medicate it, caress it, even sing to it. We tend to these basic functions not because we are brave or selfless but because, like breath, it is the most fundamental act of our species: to sustain the body until time leaves it behind.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“All freedom is relative—you know too well—and sometimes it’s no freedom at all, but simply the cage widening far away from you, the bars abstracted with distance but still there, as when they “free” wild animals into nature preserves only to contain them yet again by larger borders. But I took it anyway, that widening. Because sometimes not seeing the bars is enough”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Ma. You once told me that memory is a choice. But if you were god, you'd know it's a flood.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Tenderness is not weakness. Rather, it is a decision to face the scathing brutality of life, but to refuse to allow brutality to set the terms of the engagement.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough