Saeed Jones Books & Quotes

“Alone and night-neoned, I write read drink drug grieve and all America keeps teaching me is that there are so many ways to die in America which, frankly, is qwhite confusing because this country killed you a decade ago and I’m still writing reading drinking drugging grieving binging binging blacking out in the cozy, claustrophobic home I’ve made out of how very, very much I miss you and the sky keeps throwing down consequences and corrections and histories and nations, I mean, come on, who can blame me for not wanting to go back outside?”

America Death Loss Grief Sadness Mourning

Book:Alive at the End of the World

Source: Alive at the End of the World

“Being black can get you killed. Being gay can get you killed. Being a black gay boy is a death wish. And one day, if you’re lucky, your life and death will become some artist’s new “project.”

Art Danger Gay Racism Prejudice Lgbtq African Americans Blacks

Book:How We Fight For Our Lives

Source: How We Fight For Our Lives

“I don't watch the video but I can feel it playing on a loop in a room miles away from where he keeps dying behind my eyes. All I have left are tiny twitches, small choices. "Please," I beg alone in the box of my dark, "I don't want to hurt that way today. I already hurt that way yesterday. Please don't kill him again.”

Pain Poetry Poem Police Trauma Police Brutality Videos

Book:Alive at the End of the World

Source: Alive at the End of the World

“I'm most dangerous when I'm hungry. I'm most hungry when I'm hurting. Seems like I'm always hurting.”

Pain Danger Hunger Hurting

Book:Alive at the End of the World

Source: Alive at the End of the World

“Some songs take women places men cannot follow.”

Men Poetry Women Music Poem Gender Songs

Book:How We Fight For Our Lives

Source: How We Fight For Our Lives

“I made myself a promise: Even if it meant becoming a stranger to my loved ones, even if it meant keeping secrets, I would have a life of my own.”

Life Family Autonomy

Book:How We Fight For Our Lives

Source: How We Fight For Our Lives

“A few months and many deaths ago, I asked someone "how are you doing" and felt, in the way her eye fell, how I had failed her before I had even reached the end of my question. I've hurt many people but it's the unintended wounds I claim now as children.”

Poetry Grief Poem Trauma Wounds Wellness Hurting Failings How Are You Doing

Book:Alive at the End of the World

Source: Alive at the End of the World

“A woman raises a boy into a man, loving him so intensely that her commitment finally repulses him.”

Children Parenting Motherhood

Book:How We Fight For Our Lives

Source: How We Fight For Our Lives

“The end of the world was mistaken for just another midday massacre in America.”

America Poetry Violence Poem Guns Massacres Mass Shootings Shootings

Book:Alive at the End of the World

Source: Alive at the End of the World

“We dialed the newly dead but they wouldn't answer. We texted, begging us to call them back, but the newly dead don't know how to read. In America, a gathering of people is called target practice or a funeral, depending on who lives long enough to define the terms.”

Death Poetry Violence Poem Dead Guns Mass Shootings Shootings

Book:Alive at the End of the World

Source: Alive at the End of the World

“Leaning against that wall, dispassionately sipping a beer, he was the kind of quiet I've noticed in certain men and long hungered for: the silence of men who have it all and thus find it all boring, who don't exert the energy necessary to flirt, persuade, or convince because they know America will come crawling to them on hands and knees.”

Power Confidence Arrogance American Dream

Book:How We Fight For Our Lives

Source: How We Fight For Our Lives

“In reality, I was a lanky, black, obvious teenager, obviously effeminate too, if given an opportunity to move or speak. But from a distance, maybe my body transformed, as the bodies of young black men are wont to do when stared at by white people in this country. Maybe my spine stretched itself into a basketball player’s posture, this stranger’s gaze giving me something I could never quite seem to give myself: the sense of being a real man, strong, even intimidating.”

Race Gay Racism Prejudice Teens Lgbtq African Americans Blacks Teenagers Lgtbq

Book:How We Fight For Our Lives

Source: How We Fight For Our Lives

“Toni Morrison’s sentences were like rivers with murky bottoms. They didn’t obey the rules I was learning in school. When I stepped in, I couldn’t see my feet; I retreated back to the shore.”

Writing Literature Sentences Rules Toni Morrison

Book:How We Fight For Our Lives

Source: How We Fight For Our Lives

“You never forget your first "faggot." Because the memory, in its way, makes you. It becomes a spine for the body of anxieties and insecurities that will follow, something to hang all that meat on. Before you were just scrawny; now you're scrawny because you're a faggot. Before you were just bookish; now you're bookish because you're a faggot.”

Gay Prejudice Lgbtq Slurs Bookishness Scrawniness

Book:How We Fight For Our Lives

Source: How We Fight For Our Lives

“I wish I knew a woman who was both the light and every shadow the light pierces.”

Light Women Shadow

Book:Alive at the End of the World

Source: Alive at the End of the World

Saeed Jones Books

How We Fight For Our Lives

Alive at the End of the World

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