"It took me many years to realize that it's hard to live in this world. I don't mean the mechanics of living, because for most of us, our hearts will beat, our lungs will take in oxygen, without us doing anything at all to tell them to. For most of us, mechanically, physically, it's harder to die than it is to live. But still we try to die. We drive too fast down winding roads, we have sex with strangers without wearing protection, we drink, we use drugs. We try to squeeze a little more life out of our lives. It's natural to want to do that. But to be alive in the world, every day, as we are given more and more and more, as the nature of 'what we can handle' changes and our methods for how we handle it change, too, that's something of a miracle."

"What I can say for certain is that there is no case study in the world that could capture the whole animal of my brother, that could show how smart and kind and generous he was, how much he wanted to get better, how much he wanted to(live) Forget for a moment what he looked like on paper, and instead see him as he was in all of his(glory in all of his beauty. It's true that for years before he died, I would look at his face and think, What a pity. what a waste. But the waste was my own, the waste was what I missed out on whenever I looked at him and saw just his addiction."

"People would pay a lot of money to someone who could turn the brain into a sieve, draining out all of that now-useless knowledge the exact way your ex liked to be kissed, the street names of the places you no longer live leaving only the essential, the immediate. There are so many things I wish I could forget, but maybe 'Forget' isn't quite right. There are so many things I wish I never knew. The thing is, we don't need to change our brains at all. Time does so much of the emptying for us. Live long enough and you'll forget almost everything you thought you'd always remember."

this book is so important for our time and i loved it. the narrative voice of yaa gyasi was so compelling and pulled me into the story from the very first sentence. all of the stories about immigrant life in the US and her brother struggling with his addiction were so heartfelt and sad but they were described so well and it just made me feel a lot. the book was so easy to get through idk just something about her writing that flows so nicely and the way the chapters were structured were super interesting, such as the excerpts from her childhood journal when she wrote letters to god. 

i love how she talks about science and religion a lot, and how the two don’t have to be entirely separate. it was really interesting to hear about it from the perspective of a person who grew up very religious and is still grappling with the concept of god and her beliefs as an adult and a woman with a career in science. i’d never really thought about how the two connect but it was super interesting to me, especially because i’m not a religious person. would 100% recommend this, great book