Subramanian

“We found a patch of grass by Smeaton’s Tower and unrolled the mattresses and sleeping bags at the most hidden edge, not daring to put the tent up as it would be far too obvious. It didn’t get dark, the street lights giving a permanent twilight. I felt exposed, vulnerable, as I never had on the path. The wild rawness of nature had never made me nervous, but here in the land of densely packed humanity I felt fear for the first time in my homeless life, every footstep, raised voice or car door making me jolt with adrenalin.”
― Raynor Winn, The Salt Path

“A lot of the people who joined ISIS were the same mercenaries who were in al-Qaeda fighting with bin Laden. And guess where they came from? Most of them were soldiers in the Iraqi army, who had to throw away their uniforms when they lost to the Americans and our military was abolished; what do you expect to happen when you destroy a country and you don’t let them have an army?’ He went on, ‘If you try and dismantle the military, then all you’re left with are a lot of hot-blooded young men with nothing to do. Of course they’re going to fight. Most of the time they don’t even know who or what they’re fighting for, but sooner or later they’ll get their hands on a gun and join a cause. Call them gangsters, mafia, criminals, tribes, ISIS or whatever, they’re all the same. They’re just gangs of young men looking for a fight.”
― Levison Wood, Arabia: A Journey Through The Heart of the Middle East

“be wealthy and generous.” Morita explained the idea of letting go of negative feelings with the following fable: A donkey that is tied to a post by a rope will keep walking around the post in an attempt to free itself, only to become more immobilized and attached to the post. The same thing applies to people with obsessive thinking who become more trapped in their own suffering when they try to escape from their fears and discomfort.5”
― Héctor García, Ikigai: The Japanese secret to a long and happy life

“It was a scary prospect indeed, not least for the many millions of Muslims around the world who had no desire whatsoever to be ruled by a mad mullah in Syria. Rarely a day went by without the news of the civil war in that country, the daily murders and executions, or of atrocities committed by these Wahhabi psychopaths. Having already travelled widely in the Islamic world, I was more intrigued than ever to find out more about what made presumably normal young men and women leave their homes to go and fight for a barbaric organisation, hell bent on the destruction of the Western world.”
― Levison Wood, Arabia: A Journey Through The Heart of the Middle East