Leen Mohamad

“There were days when she was very happy without knowing why. She was happy to be alive and breathing, when her whole being seemed to be one with the sunlight, the color, the odors, the luxuriant warmth of some perfect Southern day. She liked then to wander alone into strange and unfamiliar places. She discovered many a sunny, sleepy corner, fashioned to dream in. And she found it good to dream and to be alone and unmolested.

There were days when she was unhappy, she did not know why—when it did not seem worth while to be glad or sorry, to be alive or dead; when life appeared to her like a grotesque pandemonium and humanity like worms struggling blindly toward inevitable annihilation.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“الحب هو ذكاء المسافة. ألّا تقترب كثيراً فتُلغي اللهفة، ولا تبتعد طويلًا فتُنسى. ألّا تضع حطبك دفعةً واحدةً في موقد من تُحب. أن تُبقيه مشتعلًا بتحريكك الحطب ليس أكثر، دون أن يلمح الآخر يدك المحرّكة لمشاعره ومسار قدره.”
― أحلام مستغانمي, الأسود يليق بك

“She was still under the spell of her infatuation. She had tried to forget him, realizing the inutility of remembering. But the thought of him was like an obsession, ever pressing itself upon her. It was not that she dwelt upon details of their acquaintance, or recalled in any special or peculiar way his personality; it was his being, his existence, which dominated her thought, fading sometimes as if it would melt into the mist of the forgotten, reviving again with an intensity which filled her with an incomprehensible longing.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“One can acquire everything in solitude except character.”
― Stendhal, Five Short Novels of Stendhal