roy

“He wasn’t even sure he was alive, because he was living like a dead man. Whereas it looked as if I was the one who’d come up emptyhanded. But I was sure about me, about everything, surer than he could ever be, sure of my life and sure of my death I had waiting for me… I had been right, I was still right, I was always right. I had lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“Let's say Yusuf never let his guard down. After the whole well situation, he decides he's never going to open himself to loving or trusting anyone again. Let's say he keeps to himself at the minister's and Zulekha doesn't try to seduce him and he doesn't go to prison. But then what? He trades pain and betrayal for loneliness? For never experiencing intimacy or connection or feeling seen? You think that's preferable?”
― Lamya H., Hijab Butch Blues

“You once told me that the human eye is god's loneliest creation. How so much of the world passes through the pupil and still it holds nothing. The eye, alone in its socket, doesn't even know there's another one, just like it, an inch away, just as hungry, as empty.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Your silence breaks over me in waves of fire.
How long will you leave me here to burn?
The heart speaks to you in the language of water.
For whom do you burn?

The sun bears witness to each lie,
lessening its heat to shield me from the flames.
When the sand of the present erases footprints of the past,
where do I turn?

Within you lies an inexhaustible well,
but you bestow your affection drop by drop.
My parched mouth forms prayers out of thirst.
An oasis or mirage? I can't discern.”
― Sheniz Janmohamed, Reminders on the Path