Paulina

“The newspaper stories were like dreams to us, bad dreams dreamt by others. How awful, we would say, and they were, but they were awful without being believable. They were too melodramatic, they had a dimension that was not the dimension of our lives. We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“El miedo era un hombre que huía de su propia sombra. Era una mujer con auriculares que solamente podía oir por ellos su propio terror. El miedo era un solipsista, un narcisista, era ciego a todo lo que no fuera él mismo. El miedo era más fuerte que la ética, más fuerte que el discernimiento, más fuerte que la responsabilidad y que la civilización. El miedo era un animal lanzado a la carrera que pisoteaba niños mientras huía de sí mismo. El miedo era un fanático, un tirano, un cobarde, un enajenado y una puta. El miedo era una bala que le apuntaba al corazón.”
― Salman Rushdie, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights

“As we drove back to Enugu, I laughed loudly,above Fela's stringent singing. I laughed because Nsukka's untarred roads coat cars with dust in the harmattan and with sticky mud in the rainy season. Because the tarred roads spring potholes like surprise presents and the air smells of hills and history and the sunlight scatters the sand and turns it into gold dust. Because Nsukka could free something deep inside your belly that would rise up to your throat and come out as freedom song. As laughter.(299)”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Purple Hibiscus

“You only have to look back five years to see a different world and, by extension, tangible proof that culture is ours to shape, if we try.”
― Lindy West, Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman