Subodh Mishra

“There is a history in all men's lives,
Figuring the nature of the times deceas'd;
The wich observ'd, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life, wich in their seeds
and weak beginnings lie intreasured.
Such things become the hatch and brood of time;
And, by the necessary form of this,
King Richard might create a perfect guess,
That great Northumberland, then false to him,
Would of that seed grow to a greater falseness;
Wich should not find a ground to root upon,
Unless on you.”
― William Shakespeare, Richard II

“I’m gettin’ tired way past where sleep rests me.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“Better to take life seriously, and reach for light solutions. Satire, for instance; or suicide. Why did people hold so fast to life, that thing they were given without being consulted? All lives were failures, in Alice’s reading of the world, and Jane’s platitude about turning failure into art was fluffy fantasy. Anyone who understood art knew that it never achieved what its maker dreamt for it. Art always fell short, and the artist, far from rescuing something from the disaster of life, was thereby condemned to be a double failure”
― Julian Barnes, Pulse

“It was constantly suggested that the high point of female heroism was to commit suicide rather than face the ‘dishonour’ of rape, as if the shame and guilt for the crime would fall on the victim rather than on the perpetrator.”
― Alex von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire