If the mortal sin of the suicide is greed, to hoard stillness and calm for yourself while dispersing your riotous internal pain among all those who survive you, then the mortal sin of the martyr must be pride, the vanity, the hubris to believe not only that your death could mean more than your living, but that your death could mean more than death

her embarrassment like a stone on her chest, sinking her into the earth.

“You never send a character onstage without knowing what they want.” Cyrus frowned. “I know what I want,” he said. “Do you?” Gabe was hunched over, his big palms flat on the round table making it look like a wooden dinner plate. “I want to matter,” Cyrus whispered. “You and everyone else. Deeper.” “I want to make great art. Art people think

Other times he’d bargain with God, promising to finally read the Quran or not touch himself in the shower in exchange for a single night of deep sleep. He made these pleas desperately, urgently, but they seldom worked, and neither made any serious attempt to honor their agreement.

Roya knew she would never be able to be the sort of mother her own mother had been, the kind who quivered with love like a wet branch.

Cyrus wondered sometimes how much ideas of leadership in the West (a term he was also dubious of—west of what? The earth is a sphere where every spot is west of every other—calling America “the west” and Iran “the Middle East” placed the center squarely in Europe) had to do with notions of an infallible Christian God.

This idea for the book, for his own dying—going into the museum he’d had a grasp of its shape, why it mattered. It was a tidy, gallant idea about leaving life for something larger than mere living. Becoming an earth martyr. It made sense, and then suddenly it didn’t. It held a shape and then suddenly it didn’t. Like boiling water poured into a cup

Like he was entitled to his friend’s adoration. How had he been so oblivious? Love was a room that appeared when you stepped into it. Cyrus understood that now, and stepped.

“Of course not. I wish I were that brave. But no. I just want to write an epic. A book. Something about secular, pacifist martyrs. People who gave their lives to something larger than themselves. No swords in their hands.” “Oh my God, so you’re a poet too! All the Persian checkboxes.”