Jay Polanski

“To Ada, though, it seemed akin to miracle that Stobrod, of all people, should offer himself up as proof positive that no matter what a waste one has made of one’s life, it is ever possible to find some path to redemption, however partial.”
― Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain

“People used to talk about Shabana's bad character, but our men both wished to see her dance and also despised her because she was a dancer. A khan's daughter can't marry a Kahn's son. We Pashtuns love shoes but don't love the cobbler; we love our scarves and blankets but do not respect the weaver. Manual workers made a great contribution to our society but received no recognition, and this is the reason so many of them joined the Taliban - to finally achieve status and power.”
― Malala Yousafzai, I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban

“The Bronze Horseman would pursue her into her grave. She felt it. Into her eternity, clambering behind her in the night and in the day, in every hour of sorrow, in every minute of weakness, in darkness, in light, through all of America he would be rattling at her heels, the way he had been relentlessly rattling at her through the past eleven hundred days, through the past eleven hundred nights, right into her maddening dust. How much longer for Tatiana's life?”
― Paullina Simons, Tatiana and Alexander

“Against the tide of violence
something spoken from the silence
like an arrow parting air
with the sharpened point of love.”
― Don Hynes, Something Will Change Me: Poems of Hope, Healing, and Personal Transformation