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Quote by Zeyn Joukhadar

“I've been afraid of the knot of shame that was tied in my belly then: the shame of earnest belief. Don't let them see the thing you love, I wanted to shout at you, but it was too late. I wanted to cover your mouth. I'd already learned from my father and my bullies that believing in something, for people like you and me, was a punishable crime.”

Quote by Zeyn Joukhadar

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The Thirty Names of Night

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Zeyn Joukhadar

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“More than anything else, Nana's not sure if she wants to open up Sora and Aeja and Nana herself to Moseh ssi, not so much the actual Sora, Aeja, and Nana, but as they exist for her, inside her. Between wishing for things to remain as they are and desiring just as strongly to smash things up, to break everything apart, Nana's internal landscape has been in severe upheaval these days.”

“Listen, Nana says. Am I selfish. Am I. Because that's what Moseh ssi said. He said I'm selfish. He asked me why I don't consider the social damage and so on to the child. And it's true, I don't think I am considering it, or not as much as I should be. I thought I'd be fine no matter what people said, but maybe the reason I felt confident was because I hadn't thought enough about it. Maybe this resolve, being determined to see this through on my part only leaves the baby vulnerable, gives the baby no choice other than to bear life and endure pain? I mean, what with the rest of the world being how it is, and how tongues will wag. In fact, even the world and what it is, all that has to be considered from a new perspective, doesn't it. And how is it, the world? Fine, is it? Fit enough that I can bring a child into it? What if the baby asks me why I let it be born? Look, the average lifespan these days is about eighty years, right. What if in all that time there's nothing but misery?”

“I've tried here to delineate some of the differences between science fiction and horror, science fiction and fantasy, terror and horror, horror and revulsion more by example than by definition. All of which is very well, but perhaps we ought to examine the emotion of horror a little more closely--not in terms of definition but in terms of effect. What does horror do? Why do people want to be horrified... why do they pay to be horrified? Why an Exorcist? A Jaws? An Alien? But before we talk about why people crave the effect, maybe we ought to spend a little time thinking about components--and if we do not choose to define horror itself, we can at least examine the elements and perhaps draw some conclusions from them.”