Larisa Onesim

“Want to play hangman? asks Theophile, and I ache to tell him that I have enough on my plate playing quadriplegic. But my communication system disqualifies repartee: the keenest rapier grows dull and falls flat when it takes several minutes to thrust it home. By the time you strike, even you no longer understand what had seemed so witty before you started to dictate it, letter by letter. So the rule is to avoid impulsive sallies. It deprives conversation of its sparkle, all those gems you bat back and forth like a ball-and I count this forced lack of humor one of the great drawbacks of my condition.”
― Jean-Dominique Bauby, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death

“I need to feel strongly, to love and admire, just as desperately as I need to breathe.”
― Jean-Dominique Bauby, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death

“am reminded of James Baldwin’s claim that “Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind.”
― Azar Nafisi, Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984