Vinaya Raghavan

“The world loved man when he smiled. The world became afraid of him when he laughed.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds

“For thousands of years, violent men have been able to tell their victims that those victims owe them something. If nothing else, they “owe them their lives” (a telling phrase) because they haven’t been killed.”
― David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years

“Life is perhaps lighting up a cigarette
in the narcotic repose between two love-makings
or the absent gaze of a passerby
who takes off his hat to another passerby
with a meaningless smile and a good morning”
― Forough Farrokhzad, Another Birth - Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season

“When foreigners come into a nation, the best way is to make them no longer foreign. That is to say, let us marry our young together and let there be children. War is costly, love is cheap.”
― Pearl S. Buck, Peony: A Novel of China