Malik

“Agamemnon, Calchas, and Odysseus, on the other hand, know that one doesn’t grow powerful thanks to the gods: they take matters into their own hands and fight to have their names written into eternity. It is no wonder they have survived for so long: they are cruel and cunning. Although they are very different from one another, they have something in common—they believe they are special because no one but them sees the horrible things that need to be done. They believe others shy away from the brutal nature of life but that they are clever enough to see and act upon it.”
― Costanza Casati, Clytemnestra

“Of all the echoing phrases in all the double talk of diplomacy, non-intervention is one the emptiest. There’s no such animal. If you see a man knock down a woman and you don’t knock down the man, you probably tell yourself you’re practicing the policy of non-intervention, but of course you’re doing no such thing. By failing to intervene on behalf of the woman, you are in fact intervening on behalf of the man.”
― Orson Welles

“Everything about me is a contradiction, and so is everything about everybody else. We are made out of oppositions; we live between two poles. There's a philistine and an aesthete in all of us, and a murderer and a saint. You don't reconcile the poles. You just recognize them.”
― Orson Welles

“Laughter was the true applause you offered to the world for being beautiful.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Narrow Road Between Desires