Sarah

“I begin to think,' said Estella, in a musing way, after another moment of calm wonder, 'that I almost understand how this comes about. If you had brought up your adopted daughter wholly in the dark confinement of these rooms, and had never let her know that there was such a thing as the daylight by which she has never once seen your face―if you had done that, and then, for a purpose, had wanted her to understand the daylight and know all about it, you would have been disappointed and angry? . . .'
Or,' said Estella, '―which is a nearer case―if you had taught her, from the dawn of her intelligence, with your utmost energy and might, that there was such a thing as daylight, but that it was made to be her enemy and destroyer, and she must always turn against it, for it had blighted you and would else blight her―if you had done this, and then, for a purpose, had wanted her to take naturally to the daylight and she could not do it, you would have been disappointed and angry? . . .'
So,' said Estella, 'I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“Funny way to spend your life, though, studying another chap's versifying.”
― A.S. Byatt, Possession

“They come giving, not taking. They create community. They believe in justice. They seek peace. How much more simple can that get for our muddle-brained minions who create insane immigration policies? Refugees enrich, not deplete, they imagine and create places, not impose inglorious eyesores on our landscapes, they welcome not spurn, they feed not starve, they work not cheat, they earn not take. They come to repair our democracy, to lay the patient on the table and carefully apply the sutures, cut out the cancer of cynicism and sew up the wound, disinfect and pray over the wound, attend to the patient, feed it, lift its head and give it water and sing to it and keep it warm and safe, even as the patient screams and swings wildly at them with knives and guns, drags them away in maddened fits of rage, and locks them in dark dungeons or in cages and starves and beats them and even rapes them, they wait patiently, hoping for a time when the patient tires and returns to its sanity.”
― Jimmy Santiago Baca, When I Walk Through That Door, I Am: An Immigrant Mother's Quest

“I have for the first time found what I can truly love–I have found you. You are my sympathy–my better self–my good angel–I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wrap my existence about you–and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.”
― Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre