Don't fall in love or let anyone's life become more important than your own.

— Hannah Lillith Assadi

Find someone who loves you more than you love them.

— Hannah Lillith Assadi

For those I come from, there is nothing more devouring than the feeling of want for home, the feeling of need for home. We are all waiting for a form of transport, a ship, a saucer to carry us out of the too-dark night.

— Hannah Lillith Assadi

Her father kneels and unclasps the urn. Above the waves she falls graceful as snow, my sister, my Sonora.

— Hannah Lillith Assadi

I am a memory house for those I have lost, those I no longer know.

— Hannah Lillith Assadi

I asked the boy who wept what it felt like, crystal meth, the prettiest name for a drug besides heroin. Crystal methamphetamine. His head fell back. He closed his eyes, then opened them. 'Come on, you know. . . You're just high as fuck.' Then in a dramatic whisper: 'Everything goes silent like a midnight of the mind.

— Hannah Lillith Assadi

I don't think I'm from this galaxy at all. I believe I came from the Andromeda Galaxy, not so far, but far enough. Maybe that's why I'm an outcast.' He drew the spiral of Andromeda close to the Milky Way, almost touching. Then he pointed to Andromeda in the night sky above us.' Maybe that's where I'm from too,' my father said. We could still see the stars.

— Hannah Lillith Assadi

I faded out. I was for a moment my father tapping on his cigarette, the way he holds it, crushing it flat. Furthermore, I was my mother at the sink, staring into the desert from the kitchen window, dishes in hand. Furthermore, I was in all the beds I'd ever slept in. Me sinking into the sheets, letting my thoughts fall down. I was running alongside the ocean, Laura splashing me with water. I was dancing to a melody I did not recognize, spinning wild and lovely into exalted leaps. Furthermore, I was no one again. Furthermore, I was someone with no name, no past. My face resumed the freshness of birth, the brightness was again in my eyes, the brightness only children own before life begins its wreckage.

— Hannah Lillith Assadi

I first understood why Christians prayed for a savior in the form of a beautiful man. He had absolved me of the blue-streaked blond.

— Hannah Lillith Assadi

I have forgiven Sonora. I have forgiven New York, forsaken the recursion of history. But I do not yet know how to forgive myself.

— Hannah Lillith Assadi