Aline Manto

“Be encouraged. Your heart is writing a poem on the world and it’s being turned into a thousand songs.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“He firmly believed that everything he did was right, that he ought on all occasions to have his own way – and like the sting of a wasp or serpent his hatred rushed out armed and poisonous against anything like opposition. He was proud of his hatred as of everything else. Always to be right, always to trample forward, and never to doubt, are not these the great qualities with which dulness takes the lead in the world?”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“To struggle against censorship, whatever its nature, and whatever the power under which it exists, is my duty as a writer, as are calls for freedom of the press. I am a passionate supporter of that freedom, and I consider that if any writer were to imagine that he could prove he didn't need that freedom, then he would be like a fish affirming in public that it didn't need water.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, Manuscripts Don't Burn: Mikhail Bulgakov A Life in Letters and Diaries

“Symbols shmimbols. Sure they're important but... Well look at Ahab's whale. Now there's a great symbol. Some say it stands for god, meaning, and purpose. Others say it stands for purposelessness and the void. But what we sometimes forget is that Ahab's whale was also just a whale.”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves