Irah Shaikh

“She had always wanted words, she loved them; grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“History, like love, is so apt to surround her heroes with an atmosphere of imaginary brightness.”
― James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans

“The agony of breaking through personal limitations is the agony of spiritual growth. Art, literature, myth and cult, philosophy, and ascetic disciplines are instruments to help the individual past his limiting horizons into spheres of ever-expanding realization. As he crosses threshold after threshold, conquering dragon after dragon, the stature of the divinity that he summons to his highest wish increases, until it subsumes the cosmos. Finally, the mind breaks the bounding sphere of the cosmos to a realization transcending all experiences of form - all symbolizations, all divinities: a realization of the ineluctable void.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces

“I was not ladylike, nor was I manly. I was something else altogether. There were so many different ways to be beautiful.”
― Michael Cunningham, A Home at the End of the World