Kris Cayson

“When the masses are against you, when fear is on every side, and when it seems like you are standing alone, that is when you should stand the tallest. That is when you plant yourself like a mountain, and you do what your heart knows is right. Even if death will be your only reward.”
― Ammar Habib, The Heart of Aleppo: A Story of the Syrian Civil War

“And it occurred to me, over a bowl of soggy cereal, that I could live like this. Compartmentalized. There, but separate. Together, but alone. Loving, but isolated. This is how I had been living most of my life, after all. In a household where my mother might appear in the middle of the night to do unspeakable things with a hairbrush. Then hours later, we’d sit across from one another sharing a platter of buttermilk biscuits for breakfast. My mother had prepared me well for this life. I glanced over at my husband, crunching away on Cheerios. I wondered who had prepared him.”
― Lisa Gardner, The Neighbor

“Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass!

The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass!”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Suddenly it wasn't only a personal thing to me. I could picture hundreds and hundreds of boys living on the wrong sides of cities, boys with black eyes who jumped at their own shadows. Hundreds of boys who maybe watched sunsets and looked at stars and ached for something better. I could see boys going down under street lights because they were mean and tough and hated the world, and it was too late to tell them that there was still good in it, and they wouldn't believe you if you did.”
― S.E. Hinton