Alaa

“لماذا لا نطلب من الأدباء أن يرسموا لنا حياة أناس كاملين بلا نقص بلا يأس بلا جبن بلا تردد؟ .. لماذا نريد أن نرى نهاية سعيدة لكل مقدمة تعيسة؟!
لأننا نفكر على هيئة أمل .. لأننا نحب أن نرى كل ما نحب أن يكون، لأننا نريد أحلام يقظتنا .. أما الحقيقة فنهرب منها”
― أنيس منصور, الوجودية

“I prefer to be left alone with my books.”
― Alison Weir, Innocent Traitor

“A man once asked me ... how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed family with a lot of male friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and had practically never seen or spoken to any men of my own age till I was about twenty-five. "Well," said the man, "I shouldn't have expected a woman (meaning me) to have been able to make it so convincing." I replied that I had coped with this difficult problem by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human beings. This aspect of the matter seemed to surprise the other speaker; he said no more, but took it away to chew it over. One of these days it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like human beings also.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Are Women Human? Penetrating, Sensible and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society

“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.”
― Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage