Light From Uncommon Stars
by Ryka Aoki

Highlights
- And then he kissed her on the lips, and she knew it didn’t mean anything, except that it meant everything.
- “Miss Satomi, don’t you care? About me being trans?” “Katrina. In my business, one does not care about bodies. One is only concerned with souls.”
- When someone needs to fly, sometimes it’s best to pull the ground away.
- If being queer had taught her anything, it was that there was always a price.
- Give someone with nothing the slightest chance to shine, and she will gratefully trade her soul.
- “Everything the audience hears, what we strive to create … what we live to convey … it comes from there. In your hollows. In your nothingness. “There is where your music gains its life.”
- Tomorrow is tomorrow. Over there is over there. And here and now is not a bad place and time to be, especially when so much of the unknown is beautiful.
- Who needs the Devil when people can create a hell like this themselves?
- With no need for a beginning, nor any reason to end, the music continues. And so, no matter who you are, where you came from, what sins you have committed or hurt you have endured … when you are alone and there is no universe left to remember you. You can always, always rewrite your song.
- One might insist that no lives were saved. One might scoff that nothing was returned. But that is as it should be. The songs will change, but the music is never truly gone. A life ends. A life begins. But always, it is here for us to play.