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“Though I knew that this tangle consisting by turns of Mama and Jan or Matzerath and Mama – sighing, straining, then moaning in exhaustion, falling apart, trailing sticky threads – meant love, Oskar still couldn't believe that love was love, and moved by love sought other loves, yet always returned to that same tangle-love, hated that love till he'd practised that love himself and was forced to defend it in his own eyes as the only true and possible love.”
― Günter Grass, The Tin Drum

“But there’s a second, blunter approach that perhaps more accurately captures the Basilisk’s stony gaze, which is that in a worldview where legitimate power is defined as power that is successfully applied, there’s no legitimate authority quite like the men with guns who kick down your door in the middle of the night.”
― Elizabeth Sandifer, Neoreaction a Basilisk: Essays on and Around the Alt-Right

“They say that love flies out the window when poverty comes in the door, but people generally get the sense backwards.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“The most unnecessary lesson however, in my memory as I realize it now, was a Sanskrit lyric, not in praise of God, but defining the perfect woman - it said the perfect woman must work like a slave, advise like a Mantri (Minister), look like Goddess Lakshmi, be patient like Mother Earth and courtesan-like in the bed chamber - this I had to recite on certain days of the week. After the lessons she released me and served food.
(Book: Grandmother's Tale in Antaeus #70: Special Fiction Issue)”
― RK Narayan