E. V. Gross

“We in ancient countries have our past—we obsess over the past. They, the Americans, have a dream: they feel nostalgia about the promise of the future.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“Why is the word yes so brief?
it should be
the longest,
the hardest,
so that you could not decide in an instant to say it,
so that upon reflection you could stop
in the middle of saying it.”
― Vera Pavlova, If There is Something to Desire: One Hundred Poems

“As it is, I can't settle, I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and know that love is as strong as death, and be on my side for ever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me. There are many forms of love and affection, some people spend their whole lives together without knowing each other's names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can you call home? Only the one who knows your name.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“The curious are always in some danger. If you are curious you might never come home, like all the men who now live with mermaids at the bottom of the sea.

Or the people who found Atlantis.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit