Helisa Taban

“Nothing optional -- from homosexuality to adultery -- is ever made punishable unless those who do the prohibiting (and exact the fierce punishment) have a repressed desire to participate.”
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

“ستوان پرسید:چرا می دویدید؟
مرتضی گفت:واسه این که صدای پاهام پشت سرم بود..خوشم می آمد.سالها بود که اونطوری جلوی خودم راه نرفته بودم.تازه مگر چند قدم دویدم.شاید از مثلا میز شما تا اون پنجره.این که اسمش دویدن نیس...هس؟”
― بیژن نجدی, یوزپلنگانی که با من دویده‌اند

“I hadn't found out yet that mankind consists of two very different races, the rich and the poor. It took me ... and plenty of other people . . . twenty years and the war to learn to stick to my class and ask the price of things before touching them, let alone setting my heart on them.”
― Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of the Night

“[Aldous Huxley] compared the brain to a 'reducing valve'. In ordinary perception, the senses send an overwhelming flood of information to the brain, which the brain then filters down to a trickle it can manage for the purpose of survival in a highly competitive world. Man has become so rational, so utilitarian, that the trickle becomes most pale and thin. It is efficient, for mere survival, but it screens out the most wondrous part of man's potential experience without his even knowing it. We're shut off from our own world.”
― Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test