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A review by atreegrowsinbooks
They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
5.0
Probably one of my favorite collections of essays I’ve ever read. I don’t think I’ll be able to adequately review this book.
Hanif Abdurraqib writes with such lyricism that it almost felt like listening to music as he narrated these works. The audio version was remarkable and I’ll be sure to grab a physical copy to mark some of my favorite passages.
“What I really want to do is say that life is impossible, and the lie we tell ourselves is that it is too short. Life, if anything, is too long. We accumulate too much along the way. Too many heartbreaks, too many funerals, too many physical setbacks. It's a miracle any of us survive at all.”
“The thing about grief is that it never truly leaves. From the moment it enters you, it becomes something you are always getting over. I will take healing in whatever form I can…”
“No one decides when the people we love are actually gone. May we all be buried on our own terms.”
“That maybe, what we see when we close our eyes is better than anything the living world could offer us in our waking hours.”
“It is hard to keep missing someone when there's no way to tell how long you've been without them. When everything blurs into a singular and brilliant darkness.”
Hanif Abdurraqib writes with such lyricism that it almost felt like listening to music as he narrated these works. The audio version was remarkable and I’ll be sure to grab a physical copy to mark some of my favorite passages.
“What I really want to do is say that life is impossible, and the lie we tell ourselves is that it is too short. Life, if anything, is too long. We accumulate too much along the way. Too many heartbreaks, too many funerals, too many physical setbacks. It's a miracle any of us survive at all.”
“The thing about grief is that it never truly leaves. From the moment it enters you, it becomes something you are always getting over. I will take healing in whatever form I can…”
“No one decides when the people we love are actually gone. May we all be buried on our own terms.”
“That maybe, what we see when we close our eyes is better than anything the living world could offer us in our waking hours.”
“It is hard to keep missing someone when there's no way to tell how long you've been without them. When everything blurs into a singular and brilliant darkness.”