Cristian

“Nobody looks like what they really are on the inside. You don’t. I don’t. People are much more complicated than that. It’s true of everybody.'

I said, 'Are you a monster? Like Ursula Monkton?'

Lettie threw a pebble into the pond. 'I don't think so,' she said. 'Monsters come in all shapes and sizes, Some of them are things people are scared of. Some of them are things that look like things people used to be scared of a long time ago. Sometimes monsters are things people should be scared of, but they aren't.'

I said, 'People should be scared of Ursula Monkton.'

'P'raps. What do you think Ursula Monkton is scared of?'

'Dunno. Why do you think she's scared of anything? She's a grown-up, isn't she? Grown-ups and monsters aren't scared of things.'

Oh, monsters are scared," said Lettie. "That's why they're monsters. And as for grown-ups...' She stopped talking, rubbed her freckled nose with a finger. Then, 'I'm going to tell you something important. Grown-ups don't look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they're big and thoughtless and they always know what they're doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. Truth is, there aren't any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“Nu înțeleg cum de o ființă umană caldă, distinsă și plină de candoare, cu mintea dezghețată și o gândire superioară, activă, pornește în viață cu idealul Madonei și sfârșește, în cele din urmă, cu păcatul Sodomei în suflet. Și mai cumplit este când cel ajuns cu idealul Sodomei în suflet nu neagă idealul Madonei, simțindu-și inima cum arde, și arde, arde într-adevăr, așa cum arde în piept iubirea inocentă din anii tinereții noastre. Nu, sufletul omului este de-a dreptul uriaș, e mult prea mare pentru cât îi este necesar și eu l-aș micșora. Doar dracu știe ce se întâmplă!... Ceea ce crezi cu minte că e rușine pentru inimă este frumusețea supremă. Poate exista oare frumusețe sodomică? Crede-mă, Alioșa, poate că nu știai acest lucru, pentru imensa majoritate a oamenilor, adevărata frumusețe este însăși Sodoma! Faptul că frumusețea este un mare mister într-adevăr, cumplit! În această privință, eu cred că există o luptă necontenită între diavol și Dumnezeu, iar câmpul de luptă se află în inimile noastre.”
― Fiódor Dostoyevski, The Brothers Karamazov

“Once upon a time, there was a boy. He lived in a village that no longer exists, on the edge of a field that no longer exists, where everything was discovered and everything was possible. A stick could be a sword. A pebble could be a diamond. A tree was a castle.
Once upon a time, there was a boy who lived in a house across the field from a girl who no longer exists. They made up a thousand games. She was the Queen and he was the King. In the autumn light, her hair shone like a crown. They collected the world in small handfuls. When the sky grew dark, they parted with leaves in their hair.
Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering. When they were ten he asked her to marry him. When they were eleven he kissed her for the first time. When they were thirteen they got into a fight and for three weeks they didn't talk. When they were fifteen she showed him the scar on her left breast. Their love was a secret they told no one. He promised her he would never love another girl as long as he lived. "What if I die?" she asked. "Even then," he said. For her sixteenth birthday, he gave her an English dictionary and together they learned the words. "What's this?" he'd ask, tracing his index finger around her ankle and she'd look it up. "And this?" he'd ask, kissing her elbow. "Elbow! What kind of word is that?" and then he'd lick it, making her giggle. "What about this," he asked, touching the soft skin behind her ear. "I don't know," she said, turning off the flashlight and rolling over, with a sigh, onto her back. When they were seventeen they made love for the first time, on a bed of straw in a shed. Later-when things happened that they could never have imagined-she wrote him a letter that said: When will you learn that there isn't a word for everything?”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

“give your daughters difficult names. give your daughters names that command the full use of tongue. my name makes you want to tell me the truth. my name doesn’t allow me to trust anyone that cannot pronounce it right.”
― Warsan Shire