“I was required to read books that opened up the world for me and made me see how much roomier it was than I imagined. I read books which gave me courage and helped me to see, and I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes.” – Abdulrazak Gurnah, Gravel Heart (2017). “I… Read More »
“I’m never gonna dance again/Guilty feet have got no rhythm/…I should’ve known better than to cheat a friend/And waste the chance that I’d been given/…Time can never mend/The careless whispers of a good friend/…There’s no comfort in the truth, pain is all that you find.” – Lyrics from Careless Whisper by George Michael. Political sex scandals titillate our… Read More »
“This is a form of evil, in my book – evil dressed up as a higher morality, as a superior or even supreme morality…In your heads, you’re still right. You remain right and will always be right. It doesn’t matter what happened, you’re forever right.” – David Guterson, The Final Case. By Rey Moreno He is a big… Read More »
“Democracy is fragile. You have to fight for every bit, every law, every safeguard, every institution, every story. You must know how dangerous it is to suffer even the tiniest cut. This is why I say to us all: we must hold the line.” — Maria Ressa. Oftentimes a small nation does not so much get the acclamation… Read More »
The Three Wise Men “A caste system is an artificial construction, a fixed and embedded ranking of human value that sets the presumed supremacy of one group against the presumed inferiority of other groups on the basis of ancestry and often immutable traits, traits that would be neutral in the abstract but are ascribed life-and-death meaning in a… Read More »
“A caste system is an artificial construction, a fixed and embedded ranking of human value that sets the presumed supremacy of one group against the presumed inferiority of other groups on the basis of ancestry and often immutable traits, traits that would be neutral in the abstract but are ascribed life-and-death meaning in a hierarchy favoring the dominant… Read More »
“Difficile est longum subito deponere amorem, / Difficile est, verum hoc qua lubet efficias. It is hard to abruptly shrug off a long-established love, / Hard, but this somehow you must do.” – Robert Galbraith, Lethal White. I see her but she doesn’t see me. I pass her by with her friends and classmates, but not a glance… Read More »
“It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.” Anne Frank. We all have our dark nature, capable of harming our own kind and other creatures, with or without provocation. In wars,… Read More »
“And it arose not because of mystical ‘ghosts from the past’ but as the result of specific actions of people who disliked their existing democracies. They disliked them because they were too weak or too imitative, too indecisive or too individualistic – or because they personally were not advancing fast enough within them.” — Anne Applebaum, Twilight of… Read More »
“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” – Louise Penny, The Madness of Crowds (2021) “A future that might bring about our end does not negate the majesty of the journey we are still taking.” –… Read More »