Emily Stroba

“Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice.”
― Henry Louis Gates Jr

“We write in response to what we read and learn; and in the end we write out of our deepest selves.”
― Andrea Barrett

“He fills me with horror and I do not hate him. How can I hate him, Raoul? Think of Erik at my feet, in the house on the lake, underground. He accuses himself, he curses himself, he implores my forgiveness!...He confesses his cheat. He loves me! He lays at my feet an immense and tragic love. ... He has carried me off for love!...He has imprisoned me with him, underground, for love!...But he respects me: he crawls, he moans, he weeps!...And, when I stood up, Raoul, and told him that I could only despise him if he did not, then and there, give me my liberty...he offered it...he offered to show me the mysterious road...Only...only he rose too...and I was made to remember that, though he was not an angel, nor a ghost, nor a genius, he remained the voice...for he sang. And I listened ... and stayed!...That night, we did not exchange another word. He sang me to sleep.”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“Little islands are all large prisons; one cannot look at the sea without wishing for the wings of a swallow.”
― Sir Richard Francis Burton