Malika

“I have always thought that perhaps formal good manners may be a cushion against heartbreak.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Have you ever seen the shadows of tears, Mr Wind-up Bird? They're nothing like ordinary shadows. Nothing at all. They come here from some other, distant world, especially for our hearts.”
― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“Some of them hated the mathematics that drove them, and some were afraid, and some worshipped the mathematics because it provided a refuge from thought and from feeling.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“[Dessie's] shop was a unique institution in Salinas. It was a woman's world. Here all the rules, and the fears that created the iron rules, went down. The door was closed to men. It was a sanctuary where women could be themselves- smelly, wanton, mystic, conceited, truthful, and interested. The whalebone corsets came off at Dessie's, the sacred corsets that moulded and warped woman-flesh into goddess-flesh. At Dessie's they were women who went to the toilet and overate and scratched and farted. And from this freedom came laughter, roars of laughter.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden