Karin Baele

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
― Mark Twain

“We have to hope, Daniel was saying, that the people who love us and who know us a little bit will in the end have seen us truly. In the end, not much else matters.”
― Ali Smith, Autumn

“If I had to sum up what he did to me, I’d say it was this: he made me sing along to all the bad songs on the radio. Both when he loved me and when he didn't.”
― Jenny Offill, Dept. of Speculation

“In your novels do you lie deliberately or just out of ignorance?"

Laughter. A murmur of approval. The writer hesitated a few seconds. Then counter-attacked:

"I'm a liar by vocation," he shouted. "I lie with joy! Literature is the only chance for a true liar to attain any sort of social acceptance."

Then more soberly, he added - his voice lowered - that the principal difference between a dictatorship and a democracy is that in the former there exists only one truth, the truth as imposed by power, while in free countries every man has the right to defend his own version of events.

Truth, he said, is a superstition.”
― José Eduardo Agualusa, The Book of Chameleons