Bryan Washington
Bryan Washington is an American writer. He published his debut short story collection, Lot, in 2019 and a novel, Memorial, in 2020. (Bryan Washington Quotes)
“But after the storm, they pushed the rest of us out, too: if you couldn’t afford to rebuild, then you had to go. If you couldn’t afford to leave, and you couldn’t afford to fix your life, then what you had to do was watch the neighborhood grow further away from you.”
Bryan Washington
Lot
“But I guess that’s the thing: we take our memories wherever we go, and what’s left are the ones that stick around, and that’s how we make a life.”
Bryan Washington
Memorial
“But the neighborhood’s changed. With our not-legals shuffling in, people who don’t have time for the violence, people whose only reason for bouncing was to get away from the violence, we’ve mellowed out, found our rhythm. Slowed down. You can raise a kid in the complex. Start a garden or some shit.”
Bryan Washington
Lot
“But then I was born, and he stepped out for a glass of water, and believe it or not he’s been thirsty ever since.”
Bryan Washington
Lot
“Denise lived in one of those walk-ups that look like garbage from a distance, then you get a little closer and they don’t look any better.”
Bryan Washington
Lot
“Eiju asked why he had our apartment number, why my mother was fu*king around. And Ma said that if only he could see himself, then he wouldn’t have to ask.”
Bryan Washington
Memorial
“He brought greasy sacks from Brothers Tacos, splitting the aluminum evenly across the carpet—but Poke wasn’t a fool. He’d seen the other boys eyeing him. He knew he’d have to contribute. He just wanted to know the stakes. Luckily for Poke, everyone had an answer for him. Before Rod, Nacho’d been another orphan junkie working the Latin bars on Washington. He’d lived in Humble with his aunt and some pocho from El Paso, until they caught him with the poppers. Then he needed a new situation. He hustled day to day before Rod cut him off at South Beach, snagging Nacho from the lap of some whiteboy by the door.”
Bryan Washington
Lot
“How often do you get to learn that lesson? That sometimes you just lose?”
Bryan Washington
Memorial
“It’s hard to head home without succumbing to nostalgia, standing where so many versions of yourself once stood.”
Bryan Washington
Memorial
“Of course sometimes people see things. Your eyes will show you what they want to, or whatever they think you should see. They’ll show you a happy family when all you have is bodies in a room. They’ll show you a man worth walking out on your whole fu*king life for, a man who will leave you with three kids and a half-rotting lot, but because your eyes are your eyes and you know what you know, you won’t see the train until it finally hits you.”
Bryan Washington
Lot
“She looked me in the face, and said, the thing about slow learners is that they eventually do learn.”
Bryan Washington
Lot
“She read beautifully, deeply. I don’t know how else to describe it. Eventually, I finally asked her what she got out of reading these books by old dead men, what the words on the page had to do with her. The kind of question an idiot asks. But she took it seriously, she pursed her lips. It’s just another way to talk to the dead, she said. It’s another way to make a way, she said.” (Bryan Washington Quotes)
Bryan Washington
Lot
“So, the next morning, despite everything, I’m at his door. My father’s door. And then I am knocking. Waiting. It’s hard to head home without succumbing to nostalgia, standing where so many versions of yourself once stood, one of a suburb’s magical properties.”
Bryan Washington
Memorial
“That loving a person means letting them change when they need to. And letting them go when they need to. And that doesn’t make them any less of a home. Just maybe not one for you. Or only for a season or two. But that doesn’t diminish the love. It just changes forms.”
Bryan Washington
Memorial
“There are no wastes. Either nothing is a waste, or everything is a waste.”
Bryan Washington
Memorial
“There’s this phenomenon that you’ll get sometimes – but not too often, if you’re lucky – where someone you think you know says something about your gayness that you weren’t expecting at all. Ben called it a tiny earthquake. I don’t think he was wrong. You’re destabilized, is the point. How much just depends on where the quake originated the fault lines.”
Bryan Washington
Memorial
“This is how easy it is to walk out of a life. I’d always wondered, and now I knew.”
Bryan Washington
Lot
“We take our memories wherever we go, and what’s left are the ones that stick around, and that’s how we make a life.”
Bryan Washington
Memorial
“We watch them dissolve in the air. They move through the sky, all at once. And bits of them sift, until they melt away so small that the eye can’t see, caught in the bridge’s wooden slats or in the river or into nothingness altogether, until we’re the only ones who’ll take the fact of their ever existing at all on with us, until we end up losing those memories, too, although even then they’ll still probably be around somewhere. It isn’t very beautiful.”
Bryan Washington
Memorial
“You’re taking up space in another human’s brain, she said. You’re a foreign entity. A parasite. That’s a lot by itself.”
Bryan Washington
Memorial
“Your eyes will show you what they want to, or whatever they think you should see.”
Bryan Washington
Lot
“Your eyes will show you what they want to, or whatever they think you should see. They’ll show you a happy family when all you have is bodies in a room. They’ll show you a man worth walking out on your whole fu*king life for, a man who will leave you with three kids and a half-rotting lot, but because your eyes are your eyes and you know what you know, you won’t see the train until it finally hits you.”
Bryan Washington
Lot
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