Sarah

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.

It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Lesen ist kein Akt der Denunziation. Lesen heißt, sich in Beziehung zu setzen zu sprachlich verfassten Welten, die uns nicht gleichgültig lassen. Kritisch zu lesen heißt, mit dem Eintritt in diese Sprachwelten unsere intellektuelle Komfortzone zu verlassen.”
― Susanne Strätling, Aus dem Nebel des Krieges: Die Gegenwart der Ukraine

“People can only get to know each other up to a point and then they make up the rest, until one day, seeing their mistake, they turn their backs on sadness and run away. Would this ever happen, if they stopped believing their dreams and made do with what was possible? If everyone accepted what was natural, then no one would suffer disappointment, no one would curse fate. We have every right to see our situation as pitiful, but we must confine our pity to ourselves. To pity another is to assume superiority and that is why we must never think we are superior to others, or that others are more unfortunate.”
― Sabahattin Ali, Kürk Mantolu Madonna

“But what I hate most is women always having to be passive … Why? Why are we always the ones running away and you are the ones chasing after us? Why is it always that we surrender and you take the spoils? Why is it that even in the way you beg, there is dominance, and pity in the way we refuse?”
― Sabahattin Ali, Kürk Mantolu Madonna