Jean Cole

“In the tradtional world, it is known that for the female of the species metamorphosis is easier than for the male. A woman leaves her father's house, sheds his name like an old skin and puts on her husband's name like a wedding dress. Her body changes and becomes capable of containing and then expelling other bodies. ... Maybe a woman's life gains its meaning through such metamophoses, but for a man it is different. The abandonment of the past makes a man meaningless. ... An exile is a hollow man trying to fill up with manhood once again, a phantom in search of lost flesh and bone, a ship in search of an anchor.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Golden House

“Dear God, she thought, help me to accept as Christ accepted. Keep my mind on helping, not judging. And remind me to put in a five-mile run this evening.”
― Julia Spencer-Fleming, In the Bleak Midwinter

“This is how we are: we fall in love with each other’s strengths, but love deepens towards permanence when we fall in love with each other’s weaknesses.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Golden House

“It is the vice of a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness, to think that a thousand square miles are a thousand times more wonderful than one square mile, and that a million square miles are almost the same as heaven.”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End