Saima Musharrat

“During the twenty years of Odesseus' absence, the people of Ithaca retained many recollections of him but never felt nostalgia for him. Whereas Odysseus did suffer nostalgia, and remembered almost nothing.

.....

For four long books of the Odyssey he had retraced in detail his adventures before the dazzled Phaeacians. But in Ithaca he was not a stranger, he was one of their own, so it never occurred to anyone to say, 'Tell us!”
― Milan Kundera, Ignorance

“Originality' is the sickness of modernity that wishes to see itself as something new, always new, in order continually to witness its own birth. In doing so, modernity is that fashionable illusion which only speaks to death”
― Carlos Fuentes, Aura

“Friendship is indispensable to man for the proper function of his memory. Remembering our past, carrying it with us always, may be the necessary requirement for maintaining, as they say, the wholeness of the self. To ensure that the self doesn't shrink, to see that it holds on to its volume, memories have to be watered like potted flowers, and the watering calls for regular contact with the witnesses of the past, that is to say, with friends. They are our mirror; our memory; we ask nothing of them but that they polish the mirror from time to time so we can look at ourselves in it.”
― Milan Kundera, Identity

“একদিন আমি তেতাল্লিশ বার সূর্য ডুবতে দেখলাম।' একটু পরে সে আরও বলল--
'জানো, লোকেদের যখন খুব মন খারাপ থাকে তখন সূর্যডোবা দেখতে ভাল লাগে।'
'তেতাল্লিশবারের দিন তাহলে তোমার খুব মন খারাপ ছিল?' কোন জবাবই কিন্তু দিল না খুদে রাজকুমার।”
― Saint Exupery, The Little Prince