I inherited this longing. I was addicted to it. And so I was at home with those who wanted and never had enough. I was at home in the places that could never be. The places found only in dreams.

— Hannah Lillith Assadi

I knew beauty for me would only ever be derived from loss.

— Hannah Lillith Assadi

I lit a cigarette. 'Go ahead, take a smoke,' my father said. 'It won't kill you. Only sadness will.

— Hannah Lillith Assadi

I look out at the reservation, still and glittering with casinos, and think of all the death dried up and buried in its dirt.

— Hannah Lillith Assadi

I loved the abandoned subway stations, rushing past the darkened platforms, the sprawl of graffiti like old letters. Letters left by ghosts.

— Hannah Lillith Assadi

I meditated on my childhood, vague and distant before high school, where Laura still flickered only on the edge of things.

— Hannah Lillith Assadi

I remember wanting to flee her, and being unable to flee her, so in need of her and half hating her for it, and I still am nauseous from it.

— Hannah Lillith Assadi

I saw Sonora before me, so otherworldly, so desolate, some cast-out mistress on the pale blue planet, and longed suddenly to stay.

— Hannah Lillith Assadi

I slowly lost any dream for myself. No one warned me of this, that the stars in New York can infect the light inside, that they can trap you in their shadow. Dylan was of course a star. He had achieved the thing we all came to New York wanting.

— Hannah Lillith Assadi

It was all so foolish then, as it is now, as it is forever. To be in love with beauty. To try to hold on to it.

— Hannah Lillith Assadi