Anantha Lakshmi

“Her definition of romance was absentminded intimacy, the way someone else's hand stray to your plate of food.
I replied: no, that's just friendship; romance is always knowing exactly where that someone else's hands are. She smiled and said, there was a time I thought that way, too. But at the heart of the romance is the knowledge that those hands may wander off elsewhere, but somehow through luck or destiny or plain blind groping they'll find a way back to you, and maybe you'll be smart enough then to be grateful for everything that's still possible, in spit of your own weaknesses- and his.”
― Kamila Shamsie, Kartography: A Lyrical Literary Romance of Fated Love and Secrets in Pakistan

“For what's the point of breeding children, if each generation does not improve on what went before.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“We are doorways, openings into something greater than ourselves, something that we don't understand and will never understand. We have nothing precious in and of ourselves. We are only precious in that we are part of something that is too big to know.”
― Eleanor Morse, White Dog Fell from the Sky