ATOMU

“The art always wins. Anything can happen to me, but the art will stay.”

“Had I not created my whole world, I would certainly have died in other people’s.”

““Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.””

“Bilingualism strikes me as a kind of synesthesia. Instead of seeing colors associated with letters and words, instead of hearing melodies, what I hear with language is the play and echo of the other language. The option to say it differently, and thus to live it differently. Language is not only a means of communication or description. It’s a framework in which we process existence. Yi writes: “It is hard to feel in an adopted language, yet it is impossible in my native language.” As every bilingual person and translator knows, there are certain words—a feeling, a way of being—that is absent in one language but perfectly brought to life in another. A word that, by existing, gives permission to be. What if you need that which does not exist in your language?”

“I’m really interested in how we remember experiences that happen online. How do we memorialize those experiences? Because some people would have us believe those aren’t real. But to me they are. I’ve had intense, emotional interpersonal experiences online that are just part of who I am, just like experiences at school or in a work environment. And I feel like the literature hasn’t really caught up to our experiences in digital landscapes. Because there’s still this idea that that’s not real life.”

“Be kind, resourceful, beautiful, friendly. Have initiative, have a sense of humor, tell right from wrong. Make mistakes, fall in love, enjoy strawberries and cream, make someone fall in love with you. Learn from experience, use words properly, be the subject of your own thoughts. Have as much diversity of behavior as any human being. Do something really new.”

“The future belongs to the impure…to those who are ready to take in a bit of the other, as well as being what they themselves are.”