More on: Essays

After watching him for a few measures’ time, I walk on. I have no interest in spying. I only look at the things that I am allowed to see from the sidewalk.

I look to poets not to confirm my ideas of the world and of God but to be shaken awake by their vision.

India Johnson on artist books, activism, and a queer library collective in Iowa.

Where else but in fiction—both reading and writing it—can one try on so many different kinds of salvation?

I was trying to pray. How I yearned to pray! But I was both fascinated and repelled by this man’s presence.

Over their caravan, a banner emblazoned with the words of their father: That we may live and not die.

It had been four months since we’d run out of money. Somehow, we were still afloat.

In no world was there enough medication, technology, or manpower to keep everyone alive.

Even though Aylon painted it in 1978, there were still oil drops around the outside of the frame. The painting appeared to drip.

Many have lamented that we don’t have a Lewis to help us think through these questions (or a Chesterton or a Tolkien to help him), but in my estimation Sally Rooney comes pretty close.