Lia

“My father was no different from a king except for one thing."

"And what was that?"

"He never taught me to kill. He left me to learn it alone as I went through life."

"Did life teach you to kill?"

"Of course it did."

"And have you killed anybody yet?"

"Yes, I have."

He stared at me for a brief moment, laughed and then said, "I can't believe that someone like you can kill."

"Why not?"

"Because you are too gentle."

"And who said to kill does not require gentleness?"

He looked into my eyes again, laughed, and said, "I cannot believe that you are capable of killing anything, even a mosquito."

"I might not kill a mosquito, but I can kill a man.”
― Nawal El-Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero

“I was born by the sea," I said. "I'd go to the beach the morning after a typhoon and find all sorts of things that the waves had tossed up. There'd be bottles and wooden geta and hats and cases for glasses, tables and chairs, things from nowhere near the water. I liked combing through the stuff, so I was always waiting for the next typhoon.

I put out my cigarette.

The strange thing is, everything washed up from the sea was purified. Useless junk, but absolutely clean. There wasn't a dirty thing. The sea is special in that way. When I look back over my life so far, I see all that junk on the beach. It's how my life has always been. Gathering up the junk, sorting through it, and then casting it off somewhere else. All for
no purpose, leaving it to wash away again.

This was in your hometown?

This is all my life. I merely go from one beach to another. Sure I remember the things that happen in between, but that's all. I never tie them together. They're so many things, clean but useless.”
― Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

“The secret killer of innovation is shame. You can’t measure it, but it is there. Every time someone holds back on a new idea, fails to give their manager much needed feedback, and is afraid to speak up in front of a client you can be sure shame played a part. That deep fear we all have of being wrong, of being belittled and of feeling less than, is what stops us taking the very risks required to move our companies forward. If you want a culture of creativity and innovation, where sensible risks are embraced on both a market and individual level, start by developing the ability of managers to cultivate an openness to vulnerability in their teams. And this, paradoxically perhaps, requires first that they are vulnerable themselves. This notion that the leader needs to be “in charge” and to “know all the answers” is both dated and destructive. Its impact on others is the sense that they know less, and that they are less than. A recipe for risk aversion if ever I have heard it. Shame becomes fear. Fear leads to risk aversion. Risk aversion kills innovation.”
― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

“You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them. —Maya Angelou”
― Brené Brown, Rising Strong: The Reckoning. The Rumble. The Revolution.