Dramy

“He knew that her body was his to engage in all the acrobatics he had learned in the books he kept hidden in a corner of his library, but with Clara even the most abominable contortions were like the thrashings of a newborn; it was impossible to spice them up with the salt of evil or the pepper of submission.”
― Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits

“If other people do not understand our behavior—so what? Their request that we must only do what they understand is an attempt to dictate to us. If this is being "asocial" or "irrational" in their eyes, so be it. Mostly they resent our freedom and our courage to be ourselves. We owe nobody an explanation or an accounting, as long as our acts do not hurt or infringe on them. How many lives have been ruined by this need to "explain," which usually implies that the explanation be "understood," i.e. approved. Let your deeds be judged, and from your deeds, your real intentions, but know that a free person owes an explanation only to himself—to his reason and his conscience—and to the few who may have a justified claim for explanation.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being

“They were dressed in black, silent, and dry-eyed, as befits the norms of sadness in a country accustomed to the dignity of grief”
― Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits

“Was it you or I who stumbled first? It does not matter. The one of us who finds the strength to get up first, must help the other.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration